The world was rattled by the case of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon, two women who vanished in April 2014 while walking in the deep forests of Panama.
Their story still bothers anybody who hears it, as what began as a thrilling journey quickly turned into a nightmare.
Donning shorts and tank tops
On April 1, 2014, Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon, both in their 20s and from the Netherlands, set out on a trekking trip near Boquete, Panama.
The Dutch pals are dressed in shorts and tank tops as they leave the location.
All they take with them is Lisanne’s small bag, which holds their cell phones, a camera, and a water bottle.
They merely wish to spend a few hours away.
They are trekking to the mountaintop overlook known as Mirador.
“We’ll be back before it gets dark,” they tell the woman who rented them the room.
We don’t know what happened next.
Six months’ worth of savings
Kris Kremers, 21, and Lisanne Froon, 22, had always dreamed of traveling the world.
40 miniKris Kremers was well known for her creativity, her ability to think outside the box, and her strong sense of responsibility. Lisanne Froon, on the other hand, was a brilliant, ambitious, and aspirational young woman who loved volleyball.
Kremers had just earned a degree in cultural social education with a focus on art instruction from the University of Utrecht. Froon had recently graduated from Deventer with a degree in applied psychology.
Only a few weeks before departing for Panama, Lisanne Froon moved in with Kris Kremers in Amersfoort, where they both worked at a local café. After six months of saving, they planned their trip to Panama as a special getaway and Froon’s graduation gift.
Their goals were to learn Spanish, volunteer with children, and make a big difference in the community.
Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon arrived in Panama on March 15, 2014. After traveling the country for two weeks, they landed in Boquete, Chiriquí, on March 29 to stay with a local family and volunteer with children for a month.
On April 1 at about 11:00 AM, they hiked the El Pianista route among the misty woods that surround the Baru volcano, which is just outside of Boquete.
Together with their host family’s dog, they set out to explore the neighborhood. However, a few hours after saying goodbye to their host family, they disappeared from sight.
Their disappearance was not immediately obvious. Their host family was concerned when the dog returned that evening without them.
I found the camera.
At first, the family waited till morning, but as the hours passed, it became clear that something was really wrong.
On April 2, authorities were alerted, and a search was started. Locals, police, and even Kremers and Froon’s family, who had flown in from the Netherlands, combed the area for days.
Weeks passed. Nothing. Then, about two months after their disappearance, a kind of breakthrough occurred.
A blue backpack was discovered by a local woman in a rice paddy beside the river. It contained Lisanne’s passport, two bras, money, sunglasses, and a water bottle, among other personal items. But when the women’s phones and camera were located, everything would be different.
A horrifying fact
The stories on the phones were horrifying.
In the days following their abduction, despite being out of service for most of that time, the devices had attempted to reach emergency numbers 77 times.
They heard the first sounds within hours of starting their journey, but the dense bush prevented them from moving forward. The most disturbing feature? One of the calls briefly connected, but it was cut off after two seconds.
On April 6, the phones attempted in vain to unlock Kremers’ phone by inputting the wrong PIN, indicating that someone—possibly Kremers herself—had made a desperate attempt to obtain assistance.
The phone never accepted the correct PIN.
The final moments were even more scary. Both phones had died by April 11.
The unsettling images
But the true nightmare was the camera itself. The pictures it contained offered a terrifying look at what might have happened to Kremers and Froon after they vanished.
The first images were rather benign, taken when the women were traveling. Their easygoing manners and happy smiles betrayed no hint of the tragedy that was about to be exposed.
But what really shivered everybody who saw them were the pictures taken between 1 and 4 AM on the night of April 8.
The unusual and unsettling images included a striking close-up of Kris Kremers’ head, piles of dirt piled in strange patterns, plastic bags and candy wrappers oddly stacked, and items strewn on rocks.
None of the nighttime photos feature the two girls, with one perhaps being an exception. This close-up of Kris Kremers’ blond hair most likely shows the back of her head. Some interpretations claim that the lower right corner of the artwork shows blood.
On April 1, 2014, at approximately 2:00 PM, Lisanne took Kris’s last photos.
It has now been proposed that one of the images shows the girls either knowing that something had already happened or that something was about to happen.
Kris bends forward with a distressed expression on her face and appears to have her hands shackled behind her back.
The images taken at night prompted a lot of issues.
Why were no pictures taken over the entire week after their disappearance till the evening of April 8? What caused the three-hour photo shoot to be so tense? Why do none of the pictures show the faces of the women? Why did they not leave a note for their loved ones, knowing that they would likely die in the forest?
Human remains
As detectives attempted to unravel the mystery, more horrifying discoveries were made a few months after the backpack was found.
Kremers’ clothes were discovered neatly folded close to the riverbank. A foot still in a boot and a pelvic bone were found near the same spot two months later, which was the most horrible discovery of all.
The remnants were desolate. Lisanne Froon’s bones appeared to have decomposed naturally, with pieces of flesh remaining attached.
On the other hand, Kris Kremers’ bones appeared disturbingly white, as if they had been bleached—a common occurrence that can happen, for instance, from exposure to sunlight.
In sum, only around 10% of Froon’s and 5% of Kremers’ bones were discovered.
“There are no marks on the bones at all — there are no discernible scratches of any kind on the bones, neither of natural nor cultural origin,” a Panamanian forensic anthropologist later stated under magnification.
But despite extensive investigations, the most puzzling topic is still unsolved: What happened to Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon?
There are no eyewitnesses or suspects, and the cause of death is unknown.
The photographs, the call logs, and the discovery of their corpses raised more questions than they did answers.
A horrible accident?
As of right now, the murders and disappearance of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon remain a mystery. Was it a deadly accident or a case of getting lost in the bush? Or was there something far more sinister at work?
The exact cause of death for Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon is still unknown. Initially, Dutch authorities, forensic experts, and search and rescue crews speculated that the two ladies may have accidentally fallen from a cliff after losing their way in the dense jungle. However, no definitive conclusion could be reached even after a comprehensive investigation.
The chilling facts of their final moments are still being pieced together by Panamanian authorities, their Dutch relatives, and countless others. We all wonder if the fate of the two young women who set off on an adventure and never returned will ever be completely understood.
