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Patrick Mullins
April 22, 2024
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A man’s empty boat is found miles away from his home. And when his body surfaces over a week later,
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On March 15, 2014, 22-year old Lisanne Froon and 21-year old Kris Kremers, both from the Netherlands, arrived in Panama. The 2 Dutch women saved up their money for 6 months to afford a 6-week long stay in Panama. Lisanne and Kris had plans to learn to speak Spanish, explore the culture, and volunteer with young children. This trip to Panama was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime.
The first two weeks of the trip, Lisanne and Kris visited all the popular tourist spots throughout Panama. On March 29, 2014, they moved into their host family’s home in the city of Boquete. In Boquete, they were going to spend the rest of their trip volunteering at a local school.
On April 1, 2014, Lisanne and Kris, along with their host family’s dog, Azul, embarked on a hike along the Pianista Trail. This was an area near Baru volcano and the continental divide. The hike was supposed to take them around 4 hours to complete and was approximately 4 kilometers long.
Later that evening, Azul, the family dog, returned to Boquete, but without Lisanne and Kris.
The following morning, April 2, 2014, Lisanne and Kris missed an appointment with a local tour guide. Once the host family learned about the missed appointment, they reported the girls missing to the National System of Civil Protection. At first, the NSCP didn’t take the report seriously, and wouldn’t get involved in the case for nearly four days.
Lisanne and Kris’s parents became worried when they hadn’t heard from their daughters in over two days. This was unusual because both girls regularly texted their parents about their time and whereabouts in Panama.
By April 3rd, the locals organized aerial and ground searches of the trail they believed Lisanne and Kris took. A couple days later, still no sign of the girls, Lisanne and Kris’s parents arrived in Panama to help look for them. Along with the parents arrived Dutch authorities and investigators to assist in the case. Dutch authorities brought tracker dogs to help locate the missing girls. The dogs were trained to detect scent for up to 9 days. But the dogs didn’t turn up any leads or clues.
After five days of searching for Lisanne and Kris, a $30,000 reward was offered for any information into their disappearance.
A Dutch investigator also came forward and made a public statement, “the women could not have simply disappeared from the trail”.
This was the first time the theory of foul play was suspected.
Weeks passed with no sign of Lisanne or Kris. Investigators and search and rescue teams didn’t find any sign of property belonging to the girls out there in the Panama jungle.
10 weeks after the girls disappeared, a woman recovered and turned over to the police Lisanne’s backpack. It was found floating along a river bank. Inside the backpack, there was $83 in cash, Lissane’s passport, a water bottle, a digital camera, 2 bras and 2 cell phones. All of the items recovered in the backpack were neatly packed, dry and in perfect condition.
A forensic search of the cell phones, Kris’s iPhone and Lisanne’s Samgun Galaxy revealed that the girls attempted to call 112, the international emergency number, and 911, the emergency number for Panama beginning on April 1, the day they left on their hike. Over the next few days, there were numerous calls placed to emergency services. Due to poor reception in the jungle, only one call is believed to have connected, which was only for one second.
Between April 7 and April 10 there were more than 77 failed attempts to access Kris’s iPhone. On April 11, there was 1 final signal check before the cell phone’s battery died. After this final signal check, nearly 11 days after the girl’s went missing, there was no further cell phone activity on either phone.
Inside Lisanne’s backpack was also a digital camera. The camera contained 100 photos taken from while the girls were lost. Of the 100 photos, 10 photos were taken during the daytime on April 1st. The next photos on the camera, 90 photos in total, were taken during the nighttime between 1:00am and 4:00am, on April 8th, 7 days after the girls went missing. Most of the images are blurry and just appear to be the camera’s flash. Some of the photos appeared to be of trash, one picture of toilet paper, and one seemed to be of the back of Kris’s head.
There was one photo missing, a photo that was deleted off the camera. The file names of the camera were numbered, beginning with Image Number 499. The next Image Number 500, and so on. Image Number 509 was missing, deleted, from the camera. This is the image between the final daytime photo taken on April 1st and the first night time photo taken on April 8th. The photo was not deleted on the digital camera itself; it was deleted some other way.
Kris’s denim shorts were reportedly found zipped and neatly folded on a rock near the location Lisanne’s backpack was discovered.
Two months after the discovery of the backpack, a pelvis bone and a hiking boot containing a human foot were recovered. The pelvis bone and foot were sent through DNA testing and identified as Lisanne. Soon after, more than 30 widely scattered human bones were found in the surrounding area. DNA tests conclusively identified the human remains as the missing girls. Among the scattered bones, investigators also located remains of 3 unknown people, in addition to Lisanne and Kris.
Lisanne’s bones and skeletal remains appeared to anthropologists like they had naturally decomposed based on the discovery of small amounts of flesh attached to the bone. Kris’s remains, on the other hand, appeared to have been bleached. They also detected the presence of phosphorus on her bones.
Because they were unable to recover any large remains of either girl, forensic pathologists were unable to determine a cause or manner of death.
Authorities officially ruled Lisanne and Kris’s death a hiking accident. However, their mysterious deaths have left many questioning this theory.
Possible theories include:
- Both girls got injured and eventually starved to death without sufficient food and water.
- The girls got lost and eventually starved to death or became injured later
- One girl got injured, while the other girl went to go look for help and got lost
- The girls were victims of foul play
For people that believe the theory of foul play was somehow involved in their death, these theories range from the girls were kidnapped by locals, they were murdered by a tour guide, they were killed by a gang, or they captured and killed by cannibals.
What do you think happened to Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers? Leave your comments below or email Courtney@ForensicTales.com
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