The Mysterious Disappearance of The Panama Girls

It was March 15, 2014 when two Dutch university students, Lisanne Froon, 22 years old, and Kris Kremers, 21, decided to embark on a trip: their goal was to reach Panama, where they hoped to do a 6-week period of tourist visits, studying Spanish and volunteering to help poor local children, settling in the rural village of Boquete, guests of a local family

Once there, the girls discovered they had mistakenly anticipated their arrival by a week and so decided to use this extra time to explore the beautiful rainforests and waterfalls in the area. On the morning of April 1, 2014, the two young women began hiking the pristine Pianista Trail: a well-trodden route on the rugged and forested border with Costa Rica, along with their host family's dog. It had been planned to be a short routine tour and they had brought only the essentials, such as swimsuits, sunglasses and cameras.

That evening, however, the dog returned home without Lisanne and Kris, the next day they did not show up for the appointment with a guide and as a result they were declared missing.

The Panamanian authorities immediately organized an intense and long search on the spot but, apart from a potential testimony that they were in the company of two unidentified men, they initially seemed to disappear into thin air. Two months later a local woman found a backpack, found near a rice field near her village of Alto Romero, in the remote Bocas del Toro region.

When the police opened it, they discovered that it belonged to Lisanne: inside were her passport, some clothes, sunglasses, some cash, a bottle of water and, most importantly, a camera and both the women's cell phones, dry and in good condition.

The phones revealed that some distress calls had been made only a few hours after their departure, both to the international emergency number and to the local one in Panama, but these had not arrived due to the lack of reception in the area where they were been carried out. Lisanne's phone had run out of battery on April 3, and Kris's phone appeared to have been turned on and off intermittently, probably to conserve battery power. Then, between April 7 and 10, there were 77 attempted calls made in rapid succession after which the phone was switched off for the last time on April 11.

The photos found on the devices appeared even stranger: the first ones seemed perfectly normal, showing the two girls posing smiling and relaxed, but as the photographic story continued, it took a darker turn. From April 8, after the frantic calls, there were 90 shots in succession at a rate of approximately one photo every 2 minutes, all taken at night between 1 and 4 in the morning. Many showed absolute darkness, as if the lens cap had not been removed, while others appeared blurry in the night jungle, suggesting the flash was being used to provide light or to capture something on memory. The most bizarre ones revealed what appeared to be toilet paper and a mirror on a rock. In another there was a stick tied to branches and pieces of red plastic, perhaps candy wrappers and probably an attempt to mark the path. The third image, the strangest, was a close-up of Kris Fremer's hair.

After the discovery of the backpack, the searches began again: a torn denim shorts were found on a rock, but much more macabre and sinister discoveries awaited the researchers. The discovery of a trekking shoe containing a foot and 33 bones scattered on the river bank with subsequent DNA testing removed all doubts: they belonged to Kris and Lisanne. By now there was nothing left for the two young women to do and with the information acquired they tried to reconstruct the events.

At first it was believed that Kris and Lisanne had fallen off a cliff during the excursion, that they had used rudimentary signals for possible searchers, but having received no help, they had died of starvation.

The possibility arose of an injury by a large predator and that the camera flash images were an attempt to chase it away.

Another more disturbing theory assumed that the girls had been kidnapped by someone, based on testimony that saw them having breakfast in the company of two men, but this did not explain having left the devices with them and the subsequent discovery of their personal effects.

Some clues were underestimated, such as the circumstance relating to the backpack: completely dry and in good condition despite being found near a river and which, despite various searches, had not been found before. Or a third print found on the same, not attributable to the girls, but never taken into consideration. Furthermore, upon checking the camera, it was discovered that photo 509 had been deleted: in a moment of danger, why would they do this? What was that shot hiding? And why did Lisanne's bones appear to have decayed naturally, while Kriss's were clean and bleached?

Many questions and suppositions which, however, have not given certain answers: to date the case of Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers is closed and generically assessed as an accident. In 2017, following other murders in the area, a possible link was raised, but although many theories have been presented, the official cause of their deaths has not been established.

In 2020, the photos of the found shorts were made public: in the 2014 documents they were "found on a rock well folded and with the zip closed", but the shots show the shorts crumpled and stuck in a small bend in the river with a traceable tear to a fall. The family members of Lisanne and Kris, who had already offered $30,000 in the past to help them search for the girls, want the case to be reopened and investigated further.