In March 2014, Dutch women Kris Kremers (21) and Lisanne Froon (22) travelled from Amsterdan to Costa Rica and then onto Panama. They would never make it home and the circumstances surrounding their deaths are still unclear, ten years later.
As some background, Kris was born on 9 August 1992. Lisanne was born on 24 September 1991. They both grew up in Amersfoort in the Netherlands. Kris was described by family and friends as open, creative and responsible. Lisanne was said to be aspiring, ambitious, intelligent and she was a passionate volleyball player.
Kris had just graduated with a degree in cultural social education from the University of Utrecht and Lisanne had a degree in applied psychology.
The two were roommates in the Netherlands and they also worked together at a cafe. They saved up for six months so they could travel to Panama together for a six week vacation. They wanted to learn Spanish on their trip and wanted to volunteer with local children.
They arrived in Panama on March 15, 2014. They toured the country for two weeks before they arrived in Boquete, Chiriqui on March 29. They had planned to stay with a local family for a month while they volunteered with local children.
Parts of Lisanne’s journal are online and she spoke about enjoying the trip.
“Waaaaah what a trip. Luckily I almost forgot about it already upon arrival in the beautiful and cosy Bocas del Toro. I would not want to be found dead in San Jose, although the chance of this is quite high in San Jose. But I could live in Bocas for the rest of my life. Maybe when I ever retire? I am sitting in the sun, which I can’t hold out much longer by the way (hot!) and I take a good look around me at my new accommodation for the next two weeks. The heat is already very special by the way, even in the shade I have the feeling that I can still burn alive. But despite this, the sun is actually quite nice. How intensely happy it can make a person. Kittens, stray cats, yes, they are regular customers here. They walk everywhere! Just like mini salamanders, even in the shower! If they manage to keep the spiders away, they could actually become my best friends. We have also seen a dolphin, the ultimate enjoyment. Drinking from a coconut, a real one yes! And getting sunburned, I worked well on my tan, what more do you want?!”
When Kris and Lisanne got to Boquete, they were told that their volunteering plans would not go ahead. They thought they had prearranged everything but when they went to the school called Aura, the head teacher told the girls there was no time for them. She also later said that she could not understand them as they barely spoke Spanish.
Miriam Guerra, a member of the host family with whom the girls were staying, described them as ‘restless’ after they were not allowed to work at the school.
Kris and Lisanne tried to fill their days by doing local tours. They also attempted to improve their Spanish.
Lisanne wrote about her disappointment in her journal.
March 31st 2014
“Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Our first day was a disaster. As we arrive at Aura on time, we are not even recognized or given a friendly welcome. The only thing we hear is “no proxima semana” = we are only welcome next week. WHAT?! We returned to the [Spanish] school disappointed and indeed, the daycare only has work for us next week. But of course we don’t buy anything for that*. Maybe we will be able to start tomorrow at Casa Esperanza. Fingers crossed! To alleviate our disappointment we went to Sigrid for a full body massage. Some enjoyment! Another day tomorrow, hasta la mañana!”
*[Scarlet: a Dutch saying. It comes down to this ‘being of no use’]
Kris said:
April 1st, 2014 (although the day of March 31st is described..)
“Today was a strange day. We were going to the project for the first time. We were quite nervous and found it nerve-racking. When we arrived we introduced ourselves, expecting the woman to know who we were because she was expecting us, after all. But that was not the case. She showed no sign of recognition and said that it was not possible now [to start volunteer work there] and that we should come back next week. Very unfriendly and not at all warm or cordial. So when we left again we were very disappointed. We were not received openly and did not feel welcome at all, unexpectedly to us. We also did not understand what was exactly going on. Then we went back to the language school to tell our story and to get some answers. It turned out that there was no place/work for us after all this week, so we couldn’t start yet. The school also found it very strange because we had planned things months in advance. Then we had to wait all day for Marjolein to hear if we could be part of another project for this week. Eventually we heard that she had not been able to speak to the volunteer coordinator yet, so she wasn’t sure, but she did think we would be able to start there. She also said that it was a nice project and after reading about it we also became enthusiastic. Tomorrow they will try to get a hold of that woman and suppose that we really like it there, then we can also just stay there*. Because we both don’t really want to go back to Aura anymore, because we didn’t feel welcome at all there, and it was really a huge disappointment. Let’s hope that the other project is really fun. Well, lets go with the Panamanian flow then.”
On Tuesday April 1, 2014, Kris and Lisanne set out on a hike on the El Pianista Trail.
The girls wrote on Facebook about their plans to hike around Boquete. Kris had a boyfriend back home, Stephan. She texted him to confirm that they were going for a hike.
Just to add in a note of interest, Lisanne was known to have asthma and had told her host family that she was experiencing shortness of breath. This may have been partly caused by the altitude change.
On April 1, they took a taxi to the start of the trail which was around 9kms from their host home. The taxi driver would say that he dropped them off at around 1.40pm.
This is an inconsistency in the story (one of many) as the clock on their digital camera indicated that they started the hike at around 11am.
The girls were only dressed for a quick hike – shorts and tank tops. They only had a small backpack, money, mobile phones, a camera and a water bottle. There is debate as to if they took any food at all as no wrappers would ever be found.
Some reports say the girls were warned not to do the hike by themselves but they dismissed the warnings. They apparently also took a local dog named Blue along with them on the hike. Blue belonged to local restaurant owners.
Later that day, Blue returned back to the restaurant without Kris and Lisanne.
When their host family realized that Kris and Lisanne had not returned, they did a quick search of the local area but found no sign of them. They decided to wait to do anything further until the following morning.
There are varying versions of that though and another says that the host mother was not aware the girls were not there and just assumed they were sleeping in the following day, as they did not come out of their rooms.
Kris and Lisanne contacted their families regularly during their vacation via WhatsApp, text and Skype. The last communication with any of their families was made by the women on April 1.
On Wednesday April 2, Kris’ mother Roelie sent her a message that went unanswered. Her father Hans sent a message to Kris later on Wednesday asking if all was okay.
When their parents had still not heard from their daughters by April 6, some of them flew to Boquete with some detectives from the Netherlands.
Police, dog units and international detectives searched the area for ten days. The parents banded together and offered a reward of US $30k.
Ten weeks later, (some reports say June 11 and others say June 14, 2014), a woman found Lisanne’s blue backpack. The woman, named Irma Mirando, said that she and her husband found the bag near a rice paddy. It was stuck between a rock and the river, on the bank of the River Culebre near the village Alto Romero. This location is around 17kms (10 miles) away from their host home and around 10-15kms (8 miles) from where the girls were hiking.
The following items were found inside the backpack:
One black and dark gray Samsung camera with battery (Note by Author: this is an error and means “Canon” as the author confirmed on pictures that the camera shown matches the Canon SX270HS)
One 16 GB memory card
One black camera case
One white Samsung cell phone with battery but no SIM card and no memory card and a light blue cover, some money was kept under the case, IMEI# (withheld) (Note by Author: the cover is also reported as green)
One black iPhone with red cover, IMEI# (withheld)
One black bra
One flower pattern bra
One pair of pink rectangular sunglasses, not worn or damaged
One pair of black round sunglasses, not worn or damaged
One key with a blue key chain
One small personal item (withheld)
A card stating name L. Froon, date xx/xx/xx (withheld), customer number xxxxxx (withheld)
A total of $88.30 USD
One snail
One small (sea) shell.
The bag was said to be in good general condition with some small amounts of damage like tears and scratches.
Investigators determined that the belongings had thirty-four different fingerprints, with thirteen on the bag. DNA was also detected on the backpack contents, but none led to any serious leads for the police.
Police started investigating the data from the phones. Around 6 hours after they started the hike, someone dialled 112 (which is the European emergency number) followed by 911 which is the emergency number in Panama. The first call was made by Kris’ i phone at 4.39pm and the other was from Lisanne’s Samsung phone at 4.51pm.
None of the calls got through due to lack of reception in the area.
By April 4, Lisanne’s phone battery died after 5am and was never used again. Kris’ phone would not make any more calls but was turned on sporadically to search for reception. Between 5 and 11 April, the iPhone was turned on multiple times but without ever entering the correct PIN code again (either no PIN or a wrong PIN code was entered). On 11 April, the phone was turned on at 10:51h (10:51 am) and was turned off for the last time at 11:56h (11:56 am). Some reports say no less than 77 attempts were made to get into the phone between April 7 -10.
There is a great blog on this case called Koudekaas.blogspot.com and this info about their phone use is from that:
On day three of their disappearance, on Thursday April 3rd, the Samsung phone from Lisanne has been powered on throughout the night. Between 02:21 and 02:41 AM a weather application was used on the Samsung phone. Then on 02:41 AM applications of the Android OS were used, but it is not known which ones.
At 11:47 the iPhone was powered on and then powered off again. At 15:59 PM the iPhone4 was powered on and the contact “Mytiam, 00 507 679xxxxx” was looked up on WhatsApp (this is not a typo). Then the phone was powered off.
There were no unsent texts in their phones and there were no ‘goodbye’ messages.
Police also looked at the data on Lisanne’s camera. The photos that were on there are what makes this case infamous, we believe. There were photos from 1 April after they started their hike. On April 8, ninety photos were taken between 1am and 4am, deep in the jungle and in complete darkness.
You can view all the photos here.
First photos show Kris and Lisanne at the airport leaving.
There are photos taken in Bocas del Toro between March 16-29.
There are pics of the women with two Dutch men, Bas van Lieshout and Edwin Cornelis. These men were not in Boquete at the time of the disappearance and are not considered suspects in the case.
The photos in Boquete start on March 29.
April 1 is the day of the hike. 33 photos were taken on that day. 23 of the photos have become public.
This info about the pics is from the Koudekaas blog:
“All 33 images were taken in 8 groups of 2 – 10 images each and show the same subjects or scenery from slightly different angles within those groups. Therefore, if there is one image from a group available, it is very easy to visualize what the missing ones show.”
The last pic taken by the women is said to be #508.
Image #509 was deleted off the camera at one point, which has raised a lot of suspicion and discussion online. This info about the missing image is from strangeoutdoors.com:
IMG #508 is the last photo taken by Lisanne and Kris. But there are two versions of photo #508: one shows in its metadata that it was taken 8 seconds after photo #507, but another version of the same photo states that this last photo of Kris looking backwards was taken 50 seconds before the previous photo of her passing the creek. This anomaly could be photo manipulation by someone. No more daytime photos were made on April 1st after the last stream picture, #508, so maybe they tried to return to Boquete at this point but were intercepted.
Dutch specialists have tried to undelete the missing photo, which usually is not a challenge when an image is manually deleted because pressing the “delete” button does not mean the whole file is erased. However, experts failed to recover the missing photo and it would be impossible for the camera to skip a number by accident when shooting pictures. Did someone connect the camera to a computer and erase the photo to make it irretrievable?
Perhaps the girls manually deleted this specific photo, and the subsequent images had permanently overwritten the deleted file. But when new pictures overwrite a manually deleted photo, there is often generally at least a fraction of the deleted photo found and to find no trace is suspicious or puzzling at least.
The Travel Channel’s “Lost in the Wild – Hike into Hell” featured the disappearance of Kris and Lisanne. The presenters, Kinga Philipps and J.J. Kelley showed simply that if Kris and Lisanne had removed photo #509 manually, any time before the first nighttime photo was made, it would have never even known that it had been deleted because the following photo (the first nighttime photo) would have automatically received photo number #509.
Basically this indicates that the other photos were taken before 509 was removed.
April 8 is when the 90 photos were taken in complete darkness.
The photos were taken between 1.29am, and 4.10am, with the majority taking place between 1.29 and 2am.
Photo #510 – April 8th 01:29:00 AM
Photo #511 – April 8th 01:30:00 AM
Photo #512-540 – 01:30-01:37 AM
Photo #541 – April 8th 01:37:57 AM
Photo #542 – April 8th 01:38:12 AM
Photo #543 – April 8th 01:38:28 AM
Photo #544 – April 8th 01:38:46 AM
Photo #545 – April 8th 01:38:57 AM
Photo #546 – April 8th 01:39:12 AM
Photo #547 – April 8th 01:39:21 AM
Photo #548 – April 8th 01:39:32 AM
Photo #549 – April 8th 01:39:42 AM
Photo #550 – April 8th 01:39:54 AM
Photo #551 – April 8th 01:40:07 AM
Photo #552 – April 8th 01:40:18 AM
Photo #553 – April 8th 01:40:32 AM
Photo #554 – April 8th 01:40:48 AM
Photo #555 – April 8th 01:40:59 AM
Photo #556 – April 8th 01:41:16 AM
Photo #559 – April 8th 01:41:26 AM
Photo #561 – April 8th 01:42:07 AM
Photo #562 – April 8th 01:42:25 AM
Photo #563 – April 8th 01:42:45 AM
Photo #564 – April 8th 01:43:14 AM
Photo #565 – April 8th 01:43:28 AM
Photo #566 – April 8th 01:43:45 AM
Photo #567 – April 8th 01:44:12 AM
Photo #568 – April 8th 01:44:37 AM
Photo #569 – April 8th 01:45:01 AM
Photo #570 – April 8th 01:45:14 AM
Photo #571 – April 8th 01:45:23 AM
Photo #572 – April 8th 01:45:32 AM
Photo #573 – April 8th 01:45:52 AM
Photo #574 – April 8th 01:46:01 AM
Photo #575 – April 8th 01:46:11 AM
Photo #576 – April 8th 01:46:20 AM
Photo #577 – April 8th 01:47:31 AM
Photo #579 – April 8th 01:48:10 AM
Photo #580 – April 8th 01:49:47 AM
Photo #582 – April 8th 01:50:05 AM
Photo #583 – April 8th 01:50:26 AM
Photo #584 – April 8th 01:51:56 AM
Photo #585 – April 8th 01:52:28 AM
Photo #586 – April 8th 01:53:02 AM
Photo #587 – April 8th 01:53:13 AM
Photo #590 – April 8th 01:55:01 AM
Photo #591 – April 8th 01:55:36 AM
Photo #592 – April 8th 01:57:03 AM
Photo #593 – April 8th 01:58:26 AM
Photo #594 – April 8th 01:58:35 AM
Photo #595 – April 8th 02:00:37 AM
Photo #597 – April 8th 02:05:25 AM
Photo #599 – April 8th 02:12:11 AM
Photo #600 – April 8th 02:15:25 AM
Photo #601 – April 8th 02:20:48 AM
Photo #602 – April 8th 02:31:25 AM
Photo #603 – April 8th 02:31:25 AM
Photo #604 – April 8th 02:37:11 AM
Photo #605 – April 8th 02:46:16 AM
Photo #606 – April 8th 03:09:35 AM
Photo #607 – April 8th 03:09:51 AM
Photo #608 – April 8th 03:22:47 AM
Photo #609 – April 8th 04:10:59 AM
Seven photos were taken within a one minute period. The person who was taking the photos seems to have been laying or seated in one area. You can see the same trees and foliage in many photos. This disproves the theory that the flash was being used for someone as a navigation tool while walking.
One of the eeriest photos taken shows the back of Kris’ head.
After the backpack was found, a local guide worked with a team of native people to conduct another search of the area. Kris’ jean shorts were found on land The people who found the shorts said they found them zipped, folded and placed on a rock above water.
They also found bones and two different shoes.
The bones were found on June 19th behind a tree in the vicinity of Alto Romero and away from the river. Lisanne’s left foot was found intact and inside her Wildebeast boot, showing multiple fractures of the metatarsals. DNA tests later confirmed a match.
The laces were still tightly laced, and it also had a sock inside the boot, the foot still had some skin and flesh on it. The shoe with the foot was found upstream.
Forensic analysis found that the cut of the bone of the foot was surprisingly clean and that no blood was found on it, but there were no signs of cutting, hacking, gunshots or teeth/ claw marks.
At least thirty-three scattered bones, mainly from a left leg, were also discovered along the same riverbank, a few miles from the cable bridge and dry river stones where some investigators think the nighttime photos may have been taken.
One half of a pelvic bone was also found, part broken, which was identified as Kris’.
Later, Kris’s no.10 right rib bone was also found, as well as a femur upper leg bone from Lisanne and possibly her tibia bone.
A rolled-up ball of skin from Lisanne’s shin was also located by investigators sometime later on August 29, 2014. The forensic pathologist later found that the skin was still in an early stage of decomposition, even containing maggots. In contrast with Kris’ fully bleached and clean bones, the pathologist also discovered that the bone marrow in Lisanne’s femur and tibia bones proved dry and un-decomposed. The bone marrow was intact and unaltered. The forensic pathologist speculated that someone may have manipulated the piece of skin.
SOURCE LIST –
https://koudekaas.blogspot.com
https://koudekaas.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-disappearance-of-kris-kremers-and_11.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_of_Kris_Kremers_and_Lisanne_Froon