Missing Panama Tourists

Deaths of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon

Two Dutch students, Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon, died on or shortly after April 1, 2014 while hiking in Panama.  An extensive search led searchers to portions of their bodies a few months later.  Their cause of death could not be determined definitively, but authorities working with forensic and search-rescue teams think it could be attributed to the two students having accidentally fallen from a cliff after becoming lost.  However, the circumstances and aftermath of their disappearance have given much speculation about their cause of death.  Foul play could not be ruled out entirely and Panamanian officials came under fire for allegedly mishandling their disappearance and aftermath.  Further investigation in 2017 uncovered new evidence to suggest foul play, as well as lead to a possible link to other murders in the area.

Background

Lisanne Froon, 22, was described as aspiring, optimistic, intelligent, and passionate volleyball player.  Kris Kremers, 21, was open, creative, and responsible.  Both growing up in Amersfoort, Froon graduated with a degree in Applied Science from Deventer the previous September, and Kremers had just completed her studies in cultural social education, specializing in art education at University of Utrecht. A few weeks prior to leaving for Panama, Froon moved in with Kremers in a dorm room in Amersfoort, where they both worked at the café/restaurant “In den Kleinen Hap.”  They saved up money for six months to travel to Panama together on a special trip to learn Spanish, and other goals like volunteering with children.  The trip was also a reward to Froon for graduating.

Disappearance

Kremers and Froon arrived in Panama for a six-week vacation on March 15, 2014.  Touring Panama for two weeks, they finally arrived in Boquete on March 29 to live with a local family for month while volunteering with children.  On April 1, they went hiking with their hosts’ dog around 11:00 near the clouded forests that surrounded the Baru volcano, possibly the trail of Pianista, not far from Boquete.  Writing on Facebook, they intended to walk around Boquete, and it was reported that they had been seen having brunch with two young Dutch men before embarking to the trail.

When the hosts’ dog returned home later that night without the women, they became alarmed.  Froon’s parents stopped parents stopped receiving text messages, which both women had been sending daily to their families.  The morning of April 2, Froon and Kremers missed an appointment with a local guide.  Local authorities began aerial searches of the forest along with local residents on April 3.  Kremer and Froon’s parents arrived on arrived in Panama on April 6 with police, dog units, and detectives from the Netherlands to conduct a full-scale search of the forests for  ten days.  The parents of Kremers and Froon offered a US$30,000 reward for information leading them to the women.

Backpack

Ten weeks later, a local woman turned in Froon’s backpack, claiming she found it in a rice paddy by a riverbank near her village of Alto Romero, in the Bocas del Toro region.  She told authorities she was sure it was not there the day before.  The backpack contained two pairs of sunglasses, US$83 in cash, Froon’s passport, a water bottle, Froon’s camera, two bras, and the women’s phones – all packed, dry, and in good condition.  The women’s phones showed that some hours after starting their hike, someone had dialed 112 (the international emergency number) and 911 (the emergency number in Panama).

The first distress call was made just hours after beginning their hike, one from Kremer’s iPhone at 16:39 and shortly after Froon’s Samsung Galaxy at 16:51.  None of the calls went through due to lack of reception in the area except for one 911 call attempt on April 3 that lasted for a little over a second before breaking up.  after April 5, Froon’s phone battery died after 05:00 and was not used again.  Kremers’s iPhone did not make any more calls but was turned on intermittently in an attempt to search for service.  After April 6, multiple attempts with a false PIN code were entered into the iPhone; it never received the correct code again.  one report showed between 7 and 10 of April, that there were 77 emergency call attempts with the iPhone.  On April 11, the phone was turned on around 10:51, and turned off for the last time at 11:56.

Froon’s camera showed photos from April 1 suggesting the women had taken a trail at the overlook of the Continental Divide and wandered into some wilderness hours before their first attempt to reach 911, with no signs of anything unusual.  On April 8, ninety flash photos were taken between 01:00 and 04:00, apparently deep in the jungle and in near-complete darkness.  A few photos show that they were possibly near a river or ravine.  Some show a twig with plastic bags and candy wrappers on top of a rock, another shows what looks like toilet paper and a mirror on another rock, and another shows the back of Kremers’s head with what looks like blood by her temple.

Discovery of Remains

The discovery of the backpack led to new searches along the Culebra.  Kremers’ jean shorts, zipped and neatly folded, were found atop a rock on the opposite bank of the tributary a few kilometers away from where Froon’s backpack was discovered (though witnesses later claim the jeans were not nearly folded but found in the river itself).  Two months later, closer to where the backpack was found, a pelvis and a boot with a foot inside were found.  Soon at least 33 widely scattered bones were discovered along the same river bank.  DNA testing confirmed they belonged to Froon and Kremers.  Froon’s bones still had skin attached, but Kremers’s bones appeared to have been bleached.  Panamanian forensic anthropologist later claims that under magnification, “there are no discernible scratches of any kind on the bones, neither of natural nor cultural origin – there are no marks on the bones at all.”