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One Missing Picture, Two Missing Women

This is the My Dark Path podcast.

The photograph of two young women looks like countless thousands of others we’ve seen of people on a vacation, getting away from it all. 21-year-old Kris Kremers beams up at the camera with squinted eyes, giving a thumbs up. Her strawberry blonde hair falls in waves over the backpack straps pressed tightly against her shoulders. 22-year-old Lisanne Froon is smiling and giving a thumbs up of her own. She’s wearing a blue athletic t-shirt, her chestnut brown hair pulled neatly into a ponytail. And spread out magnificently behind them are the rolling green mountains of Panama. It looks like a glorious day for a hike.

The young women were from the Netherlands, a long way from home, but this trip had been well-planned, and they were in an area friendly to tourists. The camera that took this picture was a Canon Powershot SX 270, a popular digital model which had just been released a year before. In the earliest years of photography, when you could only produce a quality image with heavy equipment, patience, and access to a dark room, travel photography was something which you could only really do if you had great wealth, or a job with National Geographic.

But technology has transformed, even revolutionized, not just how we travel but how we record our experiences of travel. It’s literally become modern slang: “Pics or it didn’t happen.” Whereas older generations would joke about being forced to sit through a relative’s long vacation slideshow, all we need to do now is open social media, and we can see what our friends and family are doing before they even come home.

Maybe it makes travel feel a little less exotic, but maybe it also makes it feel a bit safer. Modern cameras and smart phones have GPS and WiFi; they can associate a picture with the exact place on Earth it was taken. If you have a camera with you, can you ever truly be lost?

This hiking trail in Panama is a dark path, indeed; because Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers never returned from it. I want to warn you up front that we’re not saving a surprising happy ending here; this is the story of two young women who died. And more, it’s a story about how the mystery of their disappearance in 2014 has brought together a vast community of amateur mystery solvers, piecing together clues and developing theories about what happened in the hours and days after they set off down that hiking trail. What has followed this initial tragedy has been a revealing study in how difficult it can be to truly “solve” some cases. And it turns out, that every step of the way, this ordinary consumer camera was involved, in ways that still fascinate and obsess everyone that follows the case. Every time it seems like it might hold an answer, it only raises deeper, and darker, questions.

***

Hi, I’m MF Thomas and welcome to Season Two of the My Dark Path podcast. In every episode, we explore the fringes of history, science and the paranormal. So, if you geek out over these subjects, you’re among friends here at My Dark Path. We hope you’ll check us out on Instagram, sign up for our newsletter at mydarkpath.com, or just send an email to us at explore@mydarkpath.com. And now in 2022 we’re launching our Patreon, where subscribers will have access to exclusive full episodes starting with our special miniseries, a My Dark Path tour of history, science, and the paranormal in Cold War Moscow.

Finally, thank you for listening and choosing to walk the Dark Paths of the world with me. Let’s get started with Episode 34: One Missing Picture, Two Missing Women

***

PART ONE

As many foreign countries as I’ve traveled to, the feeling never goes away completely. That heart-thumping rush that comes from taking those first, uncertain steps on unfamiliar ground. All your senses are more engaged, whether it’s trying to decode the chatter of different languages, or just touching the bark of a tree you’ve never encountered before. Feeling new earth under your feet. It’s always a little bit scary, but it makes the experience intoxicating.

(ROOM FOR MATT TO SHARE MEMORIES OF HIS EARLIEST FOREIGN TRAVELS.)

I think that good travel always involves a bit of getting lost on purpose. The more we immerse ourselves, the more we take risks; but many of these risks are the sort of thing you can look back on and laugh – the unpredictable reaction to native cuisine, maybe a moment of social awkwardness as an attempt to communicate gets lost in translation. That gauche feeling of not knowing local customs and traditions.

We have plenty of tools at our disposal to put all these risks in a safe frame. Travel reservations, Internet research, the reassuring presence of a US Embassy, professional guides and local agents with the training and experience to maximize the pleasure of your trip.

But there are also those darker fears, of our status as foreign visitors making us targets. In our Season 1 episode about extraordinary crimes, we talked about the time when a coordinated group of street kids attempted to steal my wallet on a foreign trip. All things considered, though, a few dollars would have been replaceable. To this day, much more frightening things happen to people traveling innocently abroad. According to the L.A. Times, since 2006, 324 Americans who traveled to Mexico disappeared there and have never been found – whether they were kidnapped, murdered, or intentionally fleeing something in America, we simply don’t know.

324 people, spread out over a decade in which many thousands of Americans cross our Southern border every single day without incident, doesn’t seem like a lot; but that’s the difference between the statistical and the personal. Every one of those 324 people, I’m sure, have someone who misses them.

As we dig into the story of Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers, we have to admit that, for all our modern technology, for all the combined efforts of official law enforcement combined with a network of true crime sleuths, we don’t really know what happened to them. And although it’s possible to nitpick some of their choices as young travelers half a world from home, a study of their overall preparations shows them to be reasonably thoughtful and careful people. Whatever happened, it appears to have been too unlikely for a reasonable person to ever predict or prepare for. At the end of the day, any attempt to control for every risk in life is an illusion.

***

Lisanne and Kris grew up in the town of Amersfoort, Utrecht in the Netherlands. Lisanne was a passionate volleyball player and ambitious student. Shortly before her trip to Panama, she had graduated with a degree in applied psychology. Friends and family described her as intelligent, empathetic, athletic, and introverted.

Kris, with her striking strawberry blonde hair, was an artist who graduated with a degree in cultural social education, with an emphasis in art education. Those who knew her say she was outgoing and energetic, kind-hearted and self-assured. It sounds as though they may have been a bit of an Odd Couple – introverted versus outgoing, creative versus scientific. But that’s the basis of many great friendships, opposites attracting. And Lisanne and Kris weren’t just friends, they were roommates and co-workers, together practically around the clock. Their work is what brought them together, they met working as waitresses at a local Amersfoort café.

And despite their differences in temperament, they shared a driving curiosity and appetite for adventure. They didn’t want their education to end with their diplomas, they wanted to be students of the world, continuing to grow and expand their minds with travel. They each packed diaries for their Panama trip, so they could record their daily adventures.

They spent six months saving their earnings for this holiday. It was intended to last six weeks, and serve as a graduation celebration for Lisanne; the first stop in a gap year full of exciting possibilities. In Europe, unlike the United States, young adults are encouraged to take time after school to travel the world - to explore new places and possibilities, open themselves up to adventure and a diversity of culture and ideas, to prepare them for fuller lives before careers, marriages, and children.

So this plan Lisanne and Kris made was not at all unusual. It actually looks extremely admirable, because they weren’t going to a party destination. Their goal was to learn Spanish, work with children, and explore the natural beauty of Central America. And they put in the time and effort to get the most out of the trip, making a detailed itinerary, and lining up accommodations in advance with a local host family.

At an altitude of 3600 feet, in one of the most mountainous regions of Central America, sits the rustic town of Boquete. To look at it is to think it could come out of a fairytale. White water cascades over bulging rocks on the Caldera River, which winds through the center of the village. In the spring, clusters of wildflowers and tangles of tall grass sprout up along its bank. And not far from the river stands the tallest mountain in Panama - Volcán Barú.

Boquete, which means Gap in Spanish, exists in an opening in these great mountains. During the California Gold Rush in the late 1800s, many migrators crossed through the region on their way to the west coast. Cutting through this gap in the mountains was a way to avoid a dangerous sea voyage. But as these travelers made their way through, many actually stopped their expedition short. Drawn by the majestic beauty of this mountainous area, they gave up the chase of gold and settled here instead. In 1911, Boquete was officially established as a village; their history inextricably interwoven with the idea of being welcoming to travelers. To this day, tourism is what sustains the local economy, so it is in everyone’s urgent interest that their village be a safe and pleasant destination.

It's easy to see why Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon chose this wild and majestic landscape. Beyond the scenery, Boquete is rich with culture, brimming with the sort of experiences which travelers treasure. Visitors can tour mountainside coffee plantations, dine at restaurants headed by celebrity chefs, shop for jewelry and organic foods at the eclectic Tuesday Market, zipline through the jungle, and immerse themselves in the impressive jazz and blues scene. Just describing all that to you makes me want to book a ticket right now.

It's also considered one of the safest towns in all of Panama. So it seemed like the perfect destination. Lisanne and Kris planned to spend weekdays volunteering with children in Boquete. And in their free time, they planned to get acquainted with local businesses and restaurants, to explore the village, and to hike picturesque mountains, marveling at the towering green trees of its thick jungle. Their host family assured them they would feel safe, comfortable, and looked after.

They arrived in Panama on March 15th, 2014; but unlike the millions of other travelers stepping off of planes, ships, and trains around the world that day, they never returned home.

***

PART TWO

The Pianista Trail is a popular hike among tourists and locals alike in Boquete. It's 4.9 miles long, well-marked, and leads to a scenic overlook in the rainforest. It starts pleasantly, easing you into the walk with fifteen minutes’ worth of open fields; but then it enters the rainforest, guiding you down a muddy pathway between clusters of intensely green trees. The top of the trail is 2000 feet higher in the mountains than the beginning; but as hikes go, you wouldn’t have to be an athlete or even a regular camper to take it on.

It's an out and back trail - once you arrive at the overlook, you enjoy it for as long you like, take plenty of pictures, then turn around and head back the way you came; back down through the forest, then those wide open fields, and back to Boquete, probably eager for a shower and a big meal.

This is the trail which Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers took on April 1st, 2014 – widely known, familiar, clearly-marked, and well-traveled by locals and tourists alike. But let’s back up a little before we get to the hike itself.

Lisanne and Kris spent the first two weeks of their trip touring other parts of Panama before making their way to Boquete. They were going to volunteer at a local school there, and they had brought numerous gifts and treasures from back home that they looked forward to sharing with the students. So far it had been a journey without major surprises – just scenery, food, and all the enrichment travel provides.

But when they arrived in this village, well-known everywhere for being welcoming to visitors, they found themselves shut out of the school. The details vary between sources, but it seems that there was a miscommunication regarding the start date. As far as the school had it, these Dutch volunteers weren’t supposed to arrive for another week. They turned the two young women away.

I can only imagine how deeply disappointing and frustrating this was to Lisanne and Kris. Lisanne had planned their trip meticulously, working closely with a Dutch travel agency and keeping an ongoing correspondence with the school in advance of their arrival. According to her father, she’d even received an email confirming their start date just three days before they set out on their trip. Now, however it may have happened, this discrepancy had thrown their plans into disarray.

Their hosts were a local family, and the mother, Myriam Guerra, later recalled how restless the young women were, with a week of newfound freetime but difficulty figuring out what to do with it.

The following day, a Sunday, Lisanne and Kris decided to explore the local area. They made the best of it, visiting restaurants and shops, and booking a few guided tours for the remainder of the week. Strangely, they scheduled a hiking tour of the Pianista Trail for Wednesday – when they would have been in a group led by an experienced local guide. But for reasons we’ll never know, they set out for the trail on their own on Tuesday, a day early.

Nobody plans to die on vacation, so it’s difficult to look back on actions like this and wonder if they have any relevance to the mystery. Plans shift, they were operating outside their itinerary. Maybe they were too bored to wait; maybe they decided they’d rather take the trail themselves than on someone else’s timetable. Maybe they didn’t like the vibe of the tour guide. Maybe they heard there would be other people their age out along the trail on Tuesday – we’ll come back to that point.

We’ll never know what prompted the change; all we know are the facts – that Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers set out to hike the Pianista Trail on Tuesday, April 1st, 2014; and never came back.

***

The trailhead was about five miles from where they were staying. Two witnesses told police that they saw the young women entering a taxi at about 1:00pm. A taxi driver claims to have dropped them off at around 1:40. Those two times seem like they could line up with a five-mile drive through mountainous roads; but here’s where we immediately start running into problems re-creating these events. That camera they brought with them had its own internal clock, and the timestamp on their first pictures from the hike puts it at around 11am. Was the camera’s clock set incorrectly? Maybe they got the new timezone wrong. Maybe they simply never set it after purchasing it.

The details of this case have been translated from Spanish to Dutch to English multiple times, and the simplest elements like the time of day when they set out immediately call for speculation and guesswork. And it’s far from the only mystery this camera contained when it was finally recovered.

The witnesses we do have seem to agree that Lisanne and Kris only brought a single bottle of water between them. With the hike only likely to take a couple of hours, that’s a little lighter than an expert would probably recommend but it was reasonable. Spring weather in Panama brings high temperatures in the upper 70’s, and they dressed lightly, in shorts and tank tops. Lisanne had a blue backpack, and she kept that digital camera zipped inside when she wasn’t using it.

In some versions of the story, they’re accompanied by a dog named Azul. Nobody seems to agree on whom was the owner of the dog – some say the owners of a local restaurant, others claim that it was the host family themselves. But Azul doesn’t appear in any of the photographs the women took, which makes the existence of the dog unlikely.

Judging by the camera, they reached the scenic overlook safely and on-schedule. The date stamps on the photographs taken up there are around 1:00pm, about two hours after their departure. That indicates an easy, unhurried pace. In the pictures, Lisanne and Kris are smiling, surrounded by stunning views of distant mountains.

Like I said, Pianista Trail is designed as an out-and-back trip, and this overlook was the furthest point. From here, travelers are supposed to go back the way they came. But for reasons unknown, these two Dutch travelers didn’t head for home. They pressed on deeper into the jungle.

As amateur investigators have pored over the details of this case, they have pointed out that there are no clear and definitive markers indicating where the mountain summit is, no sign saying “Turn Around Here”. There is a trail which continues past the lookout, but it’s significantly more rugged and difficult to follow; challenging enough to deter the average hiker from carrying on even if they have become confused.

Did these two young women, known for being careful advance planners, not realize that they were at the turnaround? They had booked a professionally guided hike along this trail before changing their plans – doesn’t it follow that they must have at least a general idea of the hike and what to expect?

Or did that spirit of adventure compel them to risk going just a little further, to look beyond where most tourists would go? With nothing else scheduled for the day, were they just not ready to go home, and wanted to take a chance that there were greater rewards ahead? I have to confess, I understand that impulse if they felt it. After all, going a little further than the usual tourist experience is what My Dark Path is all about.

Then there’s a more unsettling theory – that someone they met along the way coerced them to go further down the trail.

The photos on the camera show them in a dense part of the rainforest nearly an hour away from the summit. It was an area most hikers don’t dare to venture, leading downhill on a network of difficult, treacherous trails known as Bocas Del Toro, the Bull’s Mouths. Unmarked, not patrolled or regulated by rangers or trail guides, they were mostly used by the local indigenous peoples, particularly the Ngöbe, who make their homes in this rugged and untamed part of the forest.

But if we can read into the looks on their faces, the women have no reason for concern; they’re still relaxed and happy. In a picture stamped at 1:54pm, Kris Kremers is posing along a rocky stream, surrounded by a canopy of trees.

It would be the last picture taken of their hike. But seven days later, the camera started working again.

***

PART THREE

The first sign discovered of the two missing Dutch hikers was a gruesome one – the disembodied foot of Lisanne Froon, rotting inside of her hiking shoe. Beyond the terror and grief experienced by the family and friends of these missing women, it rattled an entire community which, for over a century, had celebrated its hospitality, its welcoming spirit for outsiders.

No doubt it’s part of the reason that so many people with no connection to this case have nonetheless devoted countless hours trying to solve it. Even eight years later, a Reddit page called FroonKremers still gets multiple new posts on any given day. The details they have catalogued hint at an array of sinister possibilities, and yet there never seems to be quite enough information for any one theory to feel more likely than the others. It’s disquieting to sit with the idea that something that was painful, frightening, and fatal, unfolded in the following hours and days, but we have no idea what. Let’s do the best we can to sort through what we do know.

Nobody saw Lisanne or Kris return from the hike on the evening of April 1st, but at that point, there was no reason for anyone to find that suspicious. They had their own separate entrance to their host’s house, and it would have been perfectly plausible that they could have eaten dinner at a local restaurant, stayed out late, and slipped discretely into their rooms.

The next morning, the host mother Myriam prepared breakfast for the girls and set it outside their room. It was just good manners not to rouse them or look in on them. As she headed out for the day, she assumed very reasonably that they were either there, or had come and gone for another day of vacation activities.

Remember that they had used a local agency to book a guided tour of the Pianista Trail. It turns out, even though they changed plans and left a day early, they’d never canceled this booking, and so this raised the first questions of their whereabouts. Their guide was waiting for them and, confused and concerned, he went to their host family’s residence to ask after them.

Now it was more conspicuous – their breakfast was uneaten, and their beds looked like they hadn’t been slept in. The guide notified a teacher at a Spanish school, where Lisanne and Kris were scheduled to take lessons. That evening, the teacher and the guide went to the police station to report the women missing.

The next morning, Thursday, a local search party started to check the surrounding forests, but they faced a daunting challenge – they had no idea which trail the women took or what time they left. Those later eyewitnesses, and that taxi driver, the searchers didn’t have that information yet. And to add to the confusion, some locals claimed that they had seen the women in town on the previous night. This was probably a simple matter of confusion in a town that had large numbers of new faces coming and going any given week. But these rumors made it that much more difficult for anyone to know where to look.

Five days after the women left for their hike, Panama's National Service for Civil Protection took over the search. For ten days, they scoured the mountains for any sign of the girls - using helicopters, dogs, and ground searchers. Still, they turned up nothing.

Many locals began to suggest that the Dutch tourists may have simply left Boquete for the week to travel to other parts of Panama until their volunteer service started. Maybe they were just being spontaneous or reckless, the way young people can be? By this point, both Lisanne and Kris’s parents were involved, and they shut down this theory. Their daughters had made contact every day of the trip. On April 1st, they had even sent texts confirming that they were leaving for a hike. And these texts proved to be the last communication anyone had with them.

On April 2nd, Hans Kremers, Kris’s father, had sent a text asking if everything was alright. When she didn’t reply, he became concerned. And by April 6th, even as the first search parties were organizing, the parents traveled to Panama, accompanied by Dutch detectives. “Missing Person” fliers went up all around the village and surrounding area. They offered a reward equivalent to $30,000 for any information on the women. The detectives teamed up with volunteers from the Red Cross to conduct their own searches.

In early May - a month after the disappearance - a specially trained Dutch search team stepped in. They brought rescue dogs; as well as dogs trained to find dead bodies. They searched day and night for any sign of Lisanne and Kris; but after nine days, they headed back to The Netherlands without having found a single shred of new evidence.

By now, the leading theory of law enforcement was that it was unlikely the two women simply got lost. If they had, they would likely have found some traces of evidence along the trail or its surrounding areas. The searchers didn’t yet have the crucial item which proved that the two young women had voluntarily continued past the summit – their camera.

It was in June, nearly ten weeks after the hike, that a local Ngöbe woman noticed a blue backpack wedged against a rock on the bank of the Culebra River near the village of Alto Romero. This would have been about a 12-hour walk from where that last photo I described to you was taken. The Ngöbe woman claimed that she had passed the same spot the day before, and that she hadn’t seen the backpack there then. She took it to the police, who concluded it belonged to Lisanne Froon.

It was in surprisingly good condition. There was some slight discoloration, a loose strap, a tear along one seam, no other damage. A bit of yellow clay was smeared on the straps and there was some loose sand in the pockets. It’s yet another mystery of the case - how this backpack seemed to survive months in the humid rainforest, possibly even a float down a river, with no water damage, no rips or stains?

Again, we have only the puzzling fact that it appeared there, in this condition, with nothing to explain how it got there.

The police took inventory of the contents of the backpack – two pairs of sunglasses, some cash - $83 or $88 dollars’ worth, depending on which source you read – Lisanne’s passport, one water bottle, some hard candy or lozenges, loose change, a snail, a seashell, two phones – Lisanne’s white Samsung Galaxy and Kris’s black iPhone in a red case, and, folded neatly on top of it all, two brassieres.

Both phones were still in working order, though Kris’s had some water damage.

Forensic investigators found over 30 unidentified sets of fingerprints across all of these items – but how many people handle money before you have it? Whose fingers brushed the passports of these international travelers? 13 DNA samples were taken from the zippers, straps, and seams of the backpack. The DNA was matched to two women and one man - but no individual was ever linked to these samples. And the two women’s own DNA was never positively matched. One sample may have come from the woman who found the backpack; or perhaps another local handled it before it was brought to the police. It was another dead end.

Remember when I said that the women were wearing tank tops on their hike? It turns out, their bra straps were visible in some of the pictures recovered from the camera, and the bras found folded in the backpack seemed to be a match. At some point, they probably removed them, maybe for comfort, maybe to go for a swim – the fact that they were folded does suggest it was done voluntarily.

The cell phones, though, told a more unsettling story, and provided authorities with the first semblance of a timeline for anything which happened.

On April 1st at 4:39pm, just hours after that photo of Kris Kremers in the stream, someone used her phone to dial 112 – the Dutch equivalent of 911. But the call never went through – this deep in the forest, there was no cell reception. Twelve minutes later, another call to 112 – this time from Lisanne’s phone. But just as before, the call failed to go through.

The data in the phones revealed that, at the time of these emergency calls, each phone had only about a half charge in their battery. So after each attempted call, the phones were turned off; most likely to conserve power. To me, this suggests a chilling awareness that, whatever happened, it might be many hours before the women got help. And the next time one of their phones turned on, it was 6:58am on April 2nd. A full night had passed.

Lisanne’s phone dialed 112, and failed. Four hours later, it called both 112 and 911, and failed again. More attempts, from both phones, more switching on and off. Whatever the crisis, it had now been 24 hours. Lisanne’s iPhone was turned on again at 4:19pm; and this time, it was left on for the remainder of the night. Maybe they were trying to leave their GPS active, in case someone was looking for them. Nothing recovered on the phone gives any hint.

On April 3rd, at 7:36am, Lisanne’s phone was turned off again. At 9:32am, Kris’s Samsung Galaxy tried calling 911 again. At 11:47am, it was turned on and then off again, without trying a call. Then again at 5:59pm.

Before sunrise on April 4th, Lisanne’s phone was turned on then promptly switched off again. Ten minutes later, at 5am, it was turned on one final time, and then its battery died.

Kris’s phone continues to turn on and off throughout the 4th, and then again on the morning of the 5th, four full days since they set out with no food and just one water bottle. Then, at 1:37pm, it’s turned on again; only this time, the PIN which unlocks the phone isn’t entered. The phone is turned off again without being used.

On April 6th, it’s turned on two more times; again without the PIN being entered. Was it now in someone else’s hands? Was Kris no longer there to enter it?

The phone is lifeless for five days. Then, on April 11th, with the families of Lisanne Froom and Kris Kremers already in Panama organizing search and rescue efforts, the phone is turned on one more time. It remains on for an hour, and then, with 22% battery remaining, it’s switched off for good.

Every detail of this cell phone log is haunting. So soon after that final, joyful picture, they were calling for emergency help. Did they lose their way back to the trail so easily? It's certainly possible. Any hiker will tell you that it doesn't take more than a few minutes of walking off trail to completely lose your way in a forest. Or was it an injury? It would fit the activity of those first hours if one of the two young women was hurt too badly to move, and her friend chose to stay with her.

From the information we have, it’s reasonable to guess that at least one of the women was alive until April 6th, and possibly as long as the 11th. Many of the amateur investigators have speculated that Kris Kremers died on the 6th, without having though to provide her PIN to Lisanne, leaving the surviving woman with a locked phone. It seems like such a tragic oversight; but we can’t say what condition of panic, dehydration, and fatigue they may have been in.

And there’s another possibility which some have suggested – that the two women weren’t alone. Perhaps they believed they were being followed, forcing them deeper into the forest. Perhaps it was this third party trying to unlock Kris’s phone after April 6th.

The investigators turned to the best source of evidence they had – the Canon PowerShot camera, still working. But, like every other trail of clues in this case, it leads only to a world of grim possibilities, but no definitive answers.

The memory card held 133 photographs taken both on, and after, April 1st. The first 34 showed an ordinary adventure hike – two smiling women enjoying the serene wilderness around them. No sign of distress. The photos chronicle Lisanne and Kris reaching the summit, enjoying the view, then pressing deeper into the jungle. Kris stands in a rocky stream an hour’s walk beyond the summit – on the memory card, this is stamped as photo 508.

And that’s the last photo taken, until a week later, in the overnight hours of April 8th.

On this night, from 1:29am to 4:10am, 99 photos were taken. They show us very little; but their existence tells an eerie story. In these nighttime images, there are no smiling faces, no mountain vistas. There are blurred images of rocks and shrubbery – as though someone was pointing the camera haphazardly toward the ground. Other shots point toward the blackened sky, capturing the blurred treetops. In one image, a loose branch lays on a massive rock. One picture stands out in this series – in it, you can see the strap of Lisanne Froon’s blue backpack, and some loose shreds of paper. One theory is that these paper shreds belong to a map the women were photographed with a few days earlier. Some of the print appears to match, but the image isn’t clear enough to confirm the match.

According to the lawyer for the women's family, it is clear these photographs were taken deep in the jungle - somewhere pitch black, where the women would not be able to see anything at all. What fears, real or imagined, would surround them in such a darkness? Would they be imagining predatory animals? Drug traffickers? Or just a steep fall that could end their life in an instant?

These look like the sort of photos that might result if you were using the camera flash to light your way. Perhaps, with phones no longer usable, this represented one last, desperate trek towards safety. But those who have examined the photos closely have debunked this theory – the photos seem to have only been taken a few feet apart. Whoever was taking them barely moved anywhere in three hours. And it doesn’t explain why whoever it is would choose to move at night instead of waiting for daytime. One alternative suggestion is that the camera flash was an attempt to scare away an animal.

In the midst of this photo gallery is one image that stands as the most ominous of them all. It appears to be a picture of the back of Kris Kremers' head. The frame is filled with a mess of thin strawberry blonde hair. Shockingly, the hair looks clean and dry. How could this be after a week in the rainforest with no bath?

Considering the angle, it would have been difficult for Kris to take this picture herself, unless it was set on a timer. So who took it – more importantly, why? What was so vital about the back of Kris’s head? Whatever it was, an entire community of sleuths has failed to find it.

The women never seem to have used the camera to document their plight in any way. If they wanted to help the authorities locate them, or learn what happened to them, these pictures didn’t provide anything like this.

Another theory would be that the women were trying to signal for help. At this point in the timeline, we do know that a full-scale search effort was underway. Had a search party moved close enough for Lisanne and Kris to hear them? Did they see something flying overhead, and use the camera flash to get its attention? That feels consistent with the pictures we see, and would be a resourceful thing to try.

But our best efforts have failed to learn anything conclusive from these 99 images, or any of the hiking shots that led up to photo 508.

Which leaves us with photo 509.

***

I haven’t told you anything about photo 509 yet; because I have no details to share with you. Chillingly, of all the photos on the Canon’s memory card, just one was deleted completely, and it would be the one photo taken in between the happy hike and that unsettling night of a flashing camera in a pitch-black jungle. We have no idea when or where it was taken, only that it was taken, and then deleted.

And this was not an accident – an examination has proven that, even if you use the Canon camera’s controls to delete a picture after taking it, it still exists on the memory card and can be recovered on a computer. Dozens of pictures and video clips which the young women had taken and deleted previously on the trip were recovered during forensic examination. The overwhelming suggestion is that, whoever deleted photo 509 knew what they were doing, and did it in a way that erased it permanently.

This missing photo is the match that has ignited the conspiratorial tinder of this entire case. Is it the key to decoding this event? What could it possibly show that needed covering up? Drug trafficking is known to happen along the less-marked trails, did the picture show collusion between the traffickers and the local authorities? Was the picture deleted to protect the identity of someone who stalked or accosted the women? Had their hike taken them into an area that someone didn’t want the police to investigate? All we have are guesses, and all of them suggest terrifying events.

Did someone involved in the official investigation have a reason to destroy this photo? That’s not the only explanation. Remember that it was over two months after the disappearance that Lisanne’s backpack was finally discovered, resting peacefully against a rock, miles away from the women’s last known location. It’s very possible that someone took the backpack with them back to civilization, erased the photo, and then returned to the jungle to plant the backpack, maybe to quiet the ongoing investigation.

For those who believe that this is simply a story of two women who got lost on a dangerous trail – the loss of this single photo is almost impossible to account for. It is gone because somebody wanted it gone.

***

PART FOUR

After the discovery of Lisanne’s backpack, investigators focused their search around the region of rainforest where it was discovered. Six Ngöbe and a local guide led them so that they didn't get lost in the thick and treacherous woods there. And it was this search, unlike the dozens before it, which finally confirmed the fate of Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers. On June 19th, 2014 the searchers discovered two pairs of shorts -  folded neatly - along the bank of the Culebra River. They also found a scattering of bones.

The bones matched the two missing women. They were scattered hours away from the spot where the backpack was found. As I mentioned, one hiking boot was discovered, with the remains of Lisanne’s foot still inside, detached from the rest of her body. The laces were tied tightly, and the foot still had skin and tissue on it.

The break in the bone was surprisingly tidy. In fact, a forensic anthropologist noted that there were no scratches or marks on the bones at all. As with so many details of this case, it has led to dark speculation – was it cut off from the rest of her body? Or was her leg chewed by animals until the foot broke loose? The evidence doesn’t lead us anywhere solid. But dozens of other bones were found in the area, most of them foot bones; plus half of a pelvis, belonging to Kris Kremers. Their conditions were slightly different – Kris’s bones appeared to be partially bleached by exposure to the sun, while Lisanne’s still had some skin on them. But in death, they were still together.

If these women died in the location where their bones were found, they would have had to cross two rivers, and walk a distance which would take nearly 14 hours at normal speed. Although there are scenarios where both bodies were carried, then you’re beginning to imagine an awfully large conspiracy; and a lot of effort just to leave them here. It's possible their bodies were scavenged by animals, which would explain the scattering of the bones. They could have also been swept around in heavy rains, pulled down stream, or taken by strong winds.

And those folded shorts add even more questions. It's highly possible that, after many hours lost, they would have sought water from a natural source. If they sipped from a local stream, there would be a heavy risk of intestinal sickness from the bacteria. But this evidence would likely have appeared in some microscopic form somewhere on their clothing. But the clothes were clean and, like the women’s brassieres – neatly folded. Was there an unknown assailant with a meticulous compulsion?

Every piece of evidence – the cell phone records, the bones, the backpack, the nighttime images, missing photo 509, the neatly folded clothes – seems to point in a different, contradictory direction. But with the bones discovered, the Panamanian police officially closed this case. The official record holds that there are no confirmed signs of foul play – that it is simply a case of two women, out of their element, succumbing to the very real dangers of the rainforest.

This story would account for an awful lot; and maybe that missing picture was truly just a computer error, made in haste as a frantic investigation raced for answers. It’s possible that’s enough for many of you to resolve this tragedy in your minds. But I want to share one final puzzle piece that, despite all my efforts, has stuck with me. And, fitting for the dark path this story has taken us down – it involves another photograph.

Not long ago, a photograph was publicized which shows two men and two women swimming in the Culebra River, near the spot where Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers went missing. It’s a fuzzy shot, taken on a flip phone, and the photographer is on the opposite side of the river, far away, making the faces difficult to recognize. But the photo is dated to the week of the fatal hike. And while you can’t see the two women in a lot of detail, their skin coloring gives away that they are not likely Panamanian. And one of them is a brunette, while the other has bright, strawberry blonde hair.

Since this photo came out, the two young men in it have been identified – and here’s where that haunting mystery strikes yet again, because within a year of Lisanne and Kris’s disappearance, they were both dead as well. Osman Valenzuela was fishing with friends when he left for some bathroom privacy. He never returned - and his body was found drowned in the river. His family was shocked, because in their words, Valenzuela had always been a strong swimmer. And one year later, the other man in the photograph, Jose Manuel Murgas, was hit by a speeding car in the middle of the night.

It's still possible that all of this is a coincidence, a series of horrific accidents. The strongest swimmers can succumb to a single mistake in a powerful current. Pedestrians are regularly killed by drivers in the dark with no nefarious motives.

But if the old saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s clear that, at every turn in this case, each picture has deepened the haunting and frustrating mystery of what killed Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers.

It makes you realize that pictures rarely tell the full story. Those perfect public faces we see on Instagram often conceal flaws and weaknesses. A baby we see smiling on Facebook may have started wailing five seconds later. And picture 508, showing two smiling women on a sunny day, holds no warning of whatever fate was lurking just outside of the frame, mere hours into their future.

I’ve thought a lot about how to resolve this story for you; and even though we’ve told you stories about mass murder, war crimes, and other horrors, it’s been harder in this case. Maybe it’s that one of the most diffuclt ideas for the human mind to accept is that bad things can happen for no reason. That, unlike in a fairy tale, there’s no cautionary lesson, no moral to this story. These two women did nothing to deserve their lives being cut so short, their final hours spent in desperation and pain. They should have come safely home, finished their ambitious gap year, and led long and fruitful lives befitting the brightness and promise they showed.

It's why there is so much attention and study devoted to healing from trauma, to addressing damaging experiences so that people don’t succumb to the false idea that they somehow deserved them. What strikes me about this story is that, out of such a terrible incident, a lot of goodness was unleashed. Complete strangers from around the world have been compelled to investigate this case, to keep it alive even as the police have tried to close it. To convey the message that, as awful as the missing piece of this story might be, it is a part of the story of their lives, and we consider it an act of respect to the deceased that we at least try.

Maybe by acknowledging this, we find our way to a place where we remember that all life carries risks, and no piece of modern technology fully protects us. If we want to enjoy a life of adventure, we can either do it naively, or we can do it with a clear vision that dangers are real, and some things are out of our control; but if you look around, there are a lot of complete strangers anywhere you go who are willing to care, and willing to help. Not everyone can be saved, but everyone can be acknowledged, everyone paid respect. I hope that we, by sharing this story, have done it with the proper respect.

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Thank you for listening to My Dark Path. I’m MF Thomas, creator and host. I produce the show with Courtney and Eli Butler; and our creative director is Dom Purdie. This story was prepared for us by Laura Townsend; making a return to the show after a sabbatical – we’re thrilled to have her back and we’ve got her working on some thrilling new stories. Our Senior Story Editor is Nicholas Thurkettle, and our fact-checker Nicholas Abraham; big thank yous to them and the entire My Dark Path team.

Please take a moment and give My Dark Path a 5-star rating wherever you’re listening. It really helps the show, and we love to hear from you.

Again, thanks for walking the dark paths of history, science and the paranormal with me. Until next time, good night.