Unexplained Deaths of Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers
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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. In 2014, two young women from the Netherlands spent six months saving their money to take a trip of a lifetime.

to spend six weeks in Panama exploring the rainforest, experiencing the culture, learning how to speak Spanish, and volunteering with small children. The first two weeks of the trip, Lisanne Froon and Chris Kramers spent their days hitting all of the popular and must-see tourist spots, hiking the rainforest, and having one of the greatest times of their lives. Until...

they disappeared. On April 1st, 2014, the two Dutch women went hiking on a popular trail but never returned home to their host family. Their remains were discovered months later after an international manhunt didn't turn up any leads. Without a proper cause of death, was this a tragic hiking accident or did the girls become victims of foul play?

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 41. The mysterious deaths of Lisanne Froon and Chris Kramers. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case. Some cases have been solved through cutting-edge forensic techniques, while other cases remain unsolved.

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Hey Forensic Tales listeners, thank you so much for everyone who reached out since last week's episode. I had mentioned that my fiancé and I, we had to postpone our early October wedding this year and we just got back from our vacation. It was so nice to get away for a little while and just take some much needed time off.

But we are back and I am so ready to talk some true crime and forensic science with you. So this week's case is probably one of the most mysterious cases we've covered. What exactly happened to 22-year-old Lisanne Froon and 21-year-old Chris Kramers still remains a complete mystery even to this day, nearly six years later.

Not even the forensic pathology in the case could answer all of the questions that still torture the families of both victims. Lisanne and Chris were girls both from the Netherlands. They lived in a city called Amersfoort. The girls had grown up together and had a very close friendship. Lisanne was described as a girl who was optimistic about things and who was intelligent.

And at 22 years old and six feet tall, she was a very talented volleyball player. She graduated college in September 2015 with a degree in applied sciences. Chris was the creative and responsible one in the friendship. Just like Lisanne, she had finished college with a degree in cultural social education specializing in art education.

After graduation, Lisanne moved into Chris's apartment and the two girls became roommates. Lisanne and Chris shared the same desire to travel the world and experience as many cultures as they could. They also both wanted to give back and to help people, especially children. Combining these interests, the two of them decided to save up their money and take a trip to Panama together.

They both worked at the same cafe restaurant, and they saved their money for six months in order to afford this trip to Panama. They wanted to go to Panama together to learn how to speak Spanish, do something significant for the locals, especially the children of Panama. And they also wanted to do something to celebrate Chris's college graduation. This was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime.

So Lisanne and Chris planned to travel and stay in Panama for a total of six weeks. They left the apartment that they shared in Amersfoort and flew to Panama on March 15, 2014. Their trip began with two weeks of touring the country. They spent time in all of the popular tourist spots and just taking everything in.

Two weeks into the trip, on March 29th, the girls moved in with a local family in the city of Baquette, a small mountain city known for its close proximity to the rainforest. They moved into the host family's house and they were going to spend the first few weeks of their trip volunteering with the local children and exploring the rainforest.

This was the part of the trip that Lisanne and Chris were really looking forward to. This area of Panama is described as being life-changing because of its pure natural beauty. Chris reportedly carried a diary with her on the trip.

And she wrote an entry into the diary that once they arrived in Baquette, the school that they were supposed to volunteer at told the girls that they were one week early. And Chris had even written in her diary that the lady from the school was rude to her and Lisanne about arriving one week early.

A couple days after Lisanne and Chris moved in with their host family, on April 1st, they reportedly woke up and the two girls met with two other Dutchmen and they met up for brunch at a local restaurant. Now, this part of the story hasn't been consistently reported.

But most of the articles on the story did report that Lisanne and Chris met up with these two Dutchmen while staying at their host family's house. And on the morning of April 1st, all four of them got together for brunch. The girls also reportedly posted about this brunch to their Facebooks that morning.

So after brunch together, Lisanne and Chris took their host family's dog, a dog named Asul, and headed out to spend the afternoon hiking on the local trails. They intended to go hiking near the clouded forest that surrounded the Baru volcano, a place not too far from where they were going to be staying. An area known for its beautiful hiking trails, not too far from the Continental Divide.

Now, Lisanne and Chris posted to Facebook that afternoon that they planned to walk around Baquette. Specifically, they planned to visit the Pianestra Trail. Now, this trail isn't considered a difficult one and doesn't require any excellent hiking skills. But it is recommended that hikers return back the way they came once they reach the trail summit.

It's also an area that can get quite muddy, especially during the rainy season. But during the first part of April, this wasn't really something that the girls would have had to deal with. So from start to finish, the trail takes anywhere from three, sometimes four hours to complete. It's a good four kilometers long. So it's really a nice hike to take.

Several hours after Lisanne and Chris, along with their host family's dog Azul, embarked on this hike, the owners of the restaurant where they had brunch earlier that day were surprised to see that the dog had made its way back to the restaurant, but the dog was by himself. There wasn't any sign of Lisanne or Chris.

And by this point, it was dark. It was well into the evening, which started to worry the girls' host family because they knew the girls didn't pack with them any overnight equipment. And it was just really odd that the dog made it back, but the girls didn't. And the family knew that they wouldn't just have abandoned the dog on their hike. That's just not something they would do.

The family also became worried about Lisanne and Chris because they always communicated their plans. And they didn't tell them that they were planning to stay the night somewhere else or spend the night on the trail. So when they didn't return home that night, it set off some alarm bells. Lisanne and Chris's host family searched the area around their home but didn't report the girls missing.

The following day, on April 2nd, Lisanne and Chris both failed to show up to an appointment they had scheduled with a local tour guide. Once the host family learned that they didn't show up to this appointment, and now they had been gone for almost 24 hours, the family decided to alert the National System of Civil Protection, which was the local law enforcement agency.

But unfortunately, the agency didn't take the report seriously. In fact, the Panama police wouldn't get involved in the case for nearly four days. At the same exact time, thousands of miles away, Lesane's parents became concerned about their daughter.

And that's because Lisanne texted her parents every single day during their trip to basically give them updates and let them know what they were up to. But Lisanne's parents didn't get a text message from their daughter on April 1st or the following day on April 2nd, which wasn't like her. She had texted them every single day for over two weeks while they were in Panama.

So Lisanne's parents reached out to Chris's parents to see maybe her parents had heard something from either girl. Maybe something was wrong with Lisanne's cell phone. Maybe she lost it. And that would explain why she hasn't texted home. But when Lisanne's parents talked to Chris's parents, they learned that neither girl had texted home over the past day and a half.

Nobody had heard from either girl. By April 3rd, local people, without the help of the police, organized a full aerial and ground search in order to find Lisanne and Chris. Even though the police wouldn't get involved for nearly four days, the local residents in the area were really eager to help in any way that they could.

Now, this is very troubling to me. And the first sign of just bad policing. In a case of two girls disappearing, you need to respond as quickly as you can. Every minute, every hour that goes by is crucial to the investigation. It's also even more crucial that people look for Lisanne and Chris right away because

Because we know the girls didn't have much water with them. They didn't have any food with them. They were just supposed to be going hiking for a few hours. So the clock is ticking for any hope of finding these girls alive. There isn't any time that can be wasted here.

A couple days after they were last seen or heard from, on April 6th, Lisanne and Chris's parents arrive in Panama from the Netherlands. And they also brought with them Dutch law enforcement authorities. Their disappearance became an international manhunt. Here we have two young women from the Netherlands who go hiking in Panama and are now missing.

This is also the point where the police in Panama finally get involved in the investigation. They finally start to take this one seriously. The Dutch authorities brought with them search and rescue dogs, specially trained for cases of missing persons and missing hikers. These dogs are trained to follow the scent of their subjects in even the most challenging and difficult environments.

They can detect scent for up to nine days. Everyone was hopeful that the dogs would be able to follow the girls' scent and ultimately lead them to Lisanne and Chris, who may have gotten lost or maybe injured out there on the trails. At first, the dogs were easily able to follow their scents, creating a basic roadmap of where the girls hiked and where they went.

But as the investigators searched alongside the dogs, they didn't find anything belonging to them. There wasn't any sign of the girls. They didn't find any of their equipment, no pieces of clothing. It was just like the dogs were following their scent. After the girls had been missing for five days, nobody knew what could have happened to them.

There was the possibility that one of them got hurt and the other girl is staying by her side. Maybe they were both hurt out there on the trail and they're somewhere together. And it was even possible that maybe one of the girls got hurt while the other tried to go back on the trail and get some help but got lost along the way.

It could also be that they got lost. Maybe they took a wrong turn off the trail and couldn't find their way back. But the search grew even more intense because everyone knew that Lisanne and Chris didn't have the supplies on them to be in the jungle by themselves for now five days.

And again, they wouldn't have had much water, they didn't have any food, and if one of them did get injured, they wouldn't have had any real medical supplies with them. After the girls' parents arrived in Panama, there was a $30,000 reward offered up for any information into their disappearance.

The parents of the two girls were willing to do just about anything they could to find the girls and to find them safe. Once the $30,000 reward was offered up by the parents, a Dutch investigator who came to Panama with the family came out and made a public statement on the case. This Dutch detective, who specialized in foreign disappearances, made a statement that, quote,

The women could not have simply disappeared from the trail. End quote. This was the very first time that authorities suggested that there may be foul play involved here, that you don't just go missing on a trail like this, and something else is likely to have caused their disappearance.

It's also uncommon for two hikers to go missing. We see this a lot more with a person out hiking by themselves. But in this case, we're talking about two adult women who, by all means, stuck together. So the Dutch authorities really started to realize that someone may have harmed the girls.

and that this wasn't a case of two missing hikers who got turned around or lost. And again, the trail that investigators believe they were on isn't known to be a difficult trail to hike. Lesane and Chris, who were healthy and athletic girls in their 20s, would have had no problem making it to the summit and back just fine.

which, if true, certainly points to foul play. The families of Lisanne and Chris continued to hold out hope that they would eventually find their daughters alive and safe. But hope began to fade when week after week, authorities didn't find a single piece of evidence into their disappearance.

For weeks, they didn't find anything belonging to the girls. They didn't find any of their gear. They didn't find any of their clothing, which, in my opinion, would likely raise the suspicion that foul play just might be involved. If they're out there on the trail for weeks without finding any sign of the girls, then

maybe someone kidnapped them while out hiking. And that's why they aren't able to find any signs of the girls. If someone kidnapped them, there wouldn't be any of their belongings on the trail. Whoever took them would have also taken their backpacks and whatever belongings that the girls had on them at the time. But if they were still out there somewhere on the trail walking,

You would think that after weeks and weeks of searching, doing aerial searches, using highly trained tracker dogs, using every possible resource, that they would at least find one or two pieces of property belonging to either girl. They didn't find anything. They didn't find anything for weeks.

It was as if Lisanne and Chris were never on the hiking trail. There was just no sign of them. Ten long weeks after Lisanne and Chris disappeared, authorities finally got their first piece of evidence, and it wasn't looking good. Fifteen hours away from the city of Baquette, authorities found Lisanne's backpack.

The backpack had been discovered by a local woman who found the bag in a riverbank near the area where she was working. She was planting rice in the area.

So the woman immediately turned the backpack over to authorities who told them that she had been working in the area for a while and that the backpack wasn't there the day before. So it must have just turned up the day that she found it. Even though the backpack had been submerged in water, it was in almost perfect condition.

Inside of the backpack, authorities found several items. They found $83 in cash, Lesane's passport, a water bottle, a digital camera, two bras, and two cell phones. All of the items recovered inside of the backpack were neatly packed, dry, and in perfect condition.

Even 10 weeks later, which may seem a little suspicious, if the backpack was found floating in the river, how was everything inside the backpack still dry and neatly packed? Now, easily the most important items recovered in the backpack were the girl's cell phones and that digital camera.

Authorities were extremely hopeful that the cell phones would provide some valuable forensic evidence about the girls' whereabouts. And they were hopeful that they used the digital camera to take pictures while they were out hiking. Even though the discovery of the backpack was huge for the investigation team,

It also meant that if Lisanne and Chris were still alive, they didn't have their cell phones, Lisanne didn't have her passport, and it had been over 10 weeks. It was pretty remarkable that after weeks of being in the water, or presumed it's been weeks of being in the water, that the cell phones and the digital camera were in perfect working condition.

Now, of course, the batteries on both cell phones and the camera had died. But once investigators charged up the devices, it provided some really shocking details about what might have happened to these girls. A forensic search of the two cell phones revealed that a few hours into the hike,

One of the girls dialed 112, which is the international emergency number. And then shortly after that, they dialed 911, which, like the United States, is the emergency phone number in Panama. The first call for help was made at 4.39 p.m. from Chris's cell phone, which was an iPhone.

Twelve minutes later, at 4.51 p.m., a call was placed to 911 from Lesane's Samsung Galaxy phone. Neither of these two emergency calls were connected to authorities because the cell phone reception out there on the hiking trail was really poor. So both of these first emergency calls failed.

there was one call that seemed like it may have gotten through. One of the 911 calls lasted for a little over one second before disconnecting. But with only a second of connection, it's highly unlikely that the girls even got through to somebody.

The digital forensic search of the cell phones detected a lot of activity from the day the girls started their hike on April 1st through April 11th. On April 2nd, the day after the girls went missing, Chris's iPhone attempted to call 112 at 6.14 p.m.,

Also on April 2nd, Lesane's Samsung Galaxy attempted to call 112 at 6.58 a.m. At 10.53 a.m., there were calls placed to 112 and 911. And at 1.56 p.m., she called 112 and then she dialed 911.

On April 3rd, Chris's iPhone dialed 911 at 9.33 a.m. And then there was a signal check at 4 o'clock p.m. Lisanne's cell phone had two signal checks on the 3rd, once at 1.50 p.m. and a second time at 4.19 p.m.

On April 4th, Chris's iPhone had two signal checks, one at 1016 a.m. and a second one at 142 p.m. There was no cell phone activity from Lesane's Samsung Galaxy on April 4th. On April 5th, which is now four days after the start of the hike, there were two signal checks from Chris's iPhone and only one signal check from Lesane's.

At 5.56 a.m., Lisanne's phone was turned on, and within a few minutes, the battery went dead. Then there was no further activity reported from her cell phone. Finally, on April 11th, there was one final signal check from Chris's iPhone, and at 11.56 a.m., the phone was turned off after being on for an hour and five minutes.

After this final signal check, there were no reported activity from either cell phone. The forensic recovery of the cell phone data told investigators a story. We can tell by the digital evidence that the first attempt at trying to reach emergency services happened on April 1st, the same day the girls started their hike.

The first emergency call was made at 4.38 p.m., which means that the girls experienced some sort of trouble less than six hours after they got to the trail. This fits into the timeline of events because the trail they were on would only take someone anywhere from three to four hours to complete.

And with this first phone call to 112, six hours into the hike, suggested that Lisanne and Chris encountered trouble on the early evening of April 1st. Which also explains why the host family dog Azul made it back to the restaurant, but the girls didn't.

Now, something worth mentioning here is that the first phone call to 112 at 4.39 p.m. tells me that something happened during the daylight. The sun wouldn't have set in the area until at least 7 p.m. or so.

So this says that whatever happened to Lassane and Chris started happening when it was still very much bright outside with the sun still out. It also has to be said that the trail was very clearly marked. It didn't seem likely that the girls got lost or took a wrong turn. In fact, it

Everything that I read suggested that if you wanted to go off the main trail, you better have some serious equipment with you in order to cut through the vegetation in the area. It would have been entirely unlikely. Lassane and Chris would have had that equipment that they would have needed to hike off that main trail.

I'm talking like they would have had to have a machete with them or something. And the girls would have had to cut through some serious vegetation if they wanted to take a detour. So the cell phone data also tells us that on the fourth day, Lisanne's cell phone goes dead. It ran out of batteries. And it appeared that Chris's iPhone seemed to be turned on and off intermittently throughout the next few days.

The forensic data pattern shows that the cell phone appeared to have been powered on in the early mornings, then powered off shortly after, and then the same thing in the evenings. The cell phone would be powered on for a short period of time in the evening, possibly to check the signal, and then it was powered off again. Now, this may have been the girls' attempts to try and save the cell phone's batteries.

The digital footprint of the cell phones wasn't the only thing troubling authorities. That's because on April 6th, that's five days after the girls were last seen, there were a number of unsuccessful attempts to unlock Chris's iPhone. Meaning someone was trying to open Chris's iPhone, but they didn't know the cell phone's passcode.

This discovery really heightened the suspicion that there was foul play involved here. That whoever did something to Lisanne and Chris took their cell phones and tried to gain access into the iPhone. This suggested that someone or multiple people tried to open Chris's iPhone but were unsuccessful because they didn't know her passcode.

This aspect of the digital evidence is troubling. If something happened, like one of the girls got injured or they got lost on the trail, who would want to unlock Chris's iPhone? We have to be rational here. It's not some wild animal out there on the trail trying to use a cell phone.

We have to assume that someone, a human being, had Chris's iPhone and tried to use it. Now, a second theory is that maybe Chris was the one who got injured and Lisanne was the one who tried to open up her cell phone to call for help, but she didn't know the passcode.

And because Chris was seriously injured or sick, possibly dead, she wasn't able to provide Lisanne with the passcode. And this would explain the numerous unsuccessful attempts to open the iPhone.

But that's the only other possible explanation other than the argument that foul play was involved and that someone else, a third party, was trying to access Chris's iPhone. This announcement really spread the idea that foul play certainly was involved in the disappearance.

This discovery really disproved any idea that the girls got lost or even injured out there in the jungle. And the theory that Lisanne was the one trying to get into Chris's iPhone and not knowing the passcode really didn't make any sense, at least to some people.

Because you would assume that if the girls were lost out there for several days, that they would know each other's passcodes to their cell phones. Or they would have removed the passcodes completely. There would have been no logical need for there to be a passcode on either cell phone in a situation like this, especially experiencing an emergency.

Both Lisanne and Chris were extremely intelligent and smart women. It seemed highly unlikely that they wouldn't have taken the passcodes off their cell phones. Again, furthering this idea that someone else was trying to access the cell phones.

And just something that I want to point out here. Now, this takes place back in 2014. So that's about six years ago from the time of this recording.

I don't know which version iPhone Chris had. I've been a longtime iPhone user myself, and I know that iPhone has the feature that you don't need to know the cell phone's passcode in order to call for 911.

So again, I don't want to speculate what type of phone she had. I'm not aware of what the iPhone features were on her particular phone or back in 2014. But if it did have the feature where you can still call 911 or 112 in the event of emergency without knowing the cell phone's passcode, then this is even more troubling for me.

The cell phones remained in service for almost 10 days after the girls disappeared. And from April 7th through April 10th, there were 77 incorrect pin attempts to access Chris's iPhone. 77. So let's talk about the digital camera that was also recovered inside the backpack.

The digital camera told an even more disturbing story about what might have happened to Lisanne and Chris. This part of the story is the most troubling and most mysterious to me. Because although the digital camera provides some insight into what happened, I think it actually raises more questions than it does answers.

And this is also the part that is really, really disturbing to me. Authorities recovered a lot of pictures taken from the digital camera and they tell a story. Again, this part is really disturbing to me. I've seen many, if not all of the photos, and it's very clear that something is wrong.

that the photos were taken either by Lisanne or Chris, or they were taken by both because they knew they were in serious trouble. There was a total of 100 pictures taken while the girls were out on the hike.

At the beginning of the camera roll, the photos were normal. They were the type of pictures you would expect to find on a digital camera belonging to two girlfriends who are out hiking on a beautiful trail in Panama. There's one particular photo taken right there on the hiking trail captured on April 1st.

One of the pictures shows Lisanne and Chris smiling. Both the girls have their thumbs up. It's a super cute picture. And you see the beautiful jungle right behind them. They both look happy. They look excited. There doesn't appear to be any trouble or evil in any of the first photos taken on that camera.

There was also another photo taken on April 1st that shows Chris. She looks like she's walking the trail and she looks back over her shoulder towards Lisanne. Again, it doesn't appear as if she's in any trouble. When I see the photo, it looks more like Chris was caught off guard by Lisanne taking the photo.

She doesn't look worried or troubled or anything like that. To me, she just looks more like she was caught off guard, like it was a candid shot. Now, of the 100 photos on the camera, there were 10 taken during the daytime on April 1st. As you make your way down the camera roll, the photos started to change.

On April 8th, seven days after the girls disappeared, 90 of the remaining 100 photos were taken with the flash on. The photos were believed to have been taken before the sun came up sometime between one and four o'clock in the morning. It's very unclear what exactly the photos are of.

Most of them are very blurry. It's clearly very dark and you mostly just see the flash of the camera. It's like when you take your iPhone and accidentally take a picture with a flashlight on at night or in the movie theater or something and you get a terrible photo. You mostly just see the white flash.

So there were 90 of these types of images on the digital camera taken on April 8th, a whole seven days after the girls disappeared. The photo appeared to have been taken somewhere in the jungle, all 90 photos, in near complete darkness.

The only piece of evidence they could get from those 90 photos was that it looked like they were taken either from the top or the bottom of some sort of ravine or some sort of river out there in the jungle. Some of the photos included pictures of what looked like trash. Another photo looked like it was a picture of toilet paper. None of them seemed to make much sense.

There was even a photo taken of what some think is the back of Chris's head. The photos are scary. I think this is a really disturbing part. We don't know why these photos were taken. We don't know what they're of. And let's just address the big elephant in the room here. These 90 photos taken in the dark

were taken seven days after Lisanne and Chris were last seen. That's an entire week. Is it really possible that the girls were still alive? One week, being alone and lost in the jungle. We know that the girls carried some water on them because there was an empty water bottle discovered in Lisanne's backpack.

But were they really able to get enough water to allow them to survive for an entire week? And what about food? Research has told us that humans can last about three weeks without food. But we can only survive three to four days without water. Is it possible that the girls obtained water from some other source?

and were still alive on April 8th when those 90 photos were taken? I just don't know. The first thing I think of when I look at the photos is that maybe they're trying to use the flash on the camera to find their way. It would have been extremely dark out there in the jungle at night. It would have been pitch black. You wouldn't have even been able to see a foot in front of you.

So I think it's possible that the girls use the camera as a flashlight to be able to see. That's because most of the pictures seem to be pointed at the ground or they seem to be pointed in no direction at all. So they use the camera, use the flash, and then looked at the photos on the camera to try and figure out where they were.

Of course, I don't know. And that's pure speculation. And there's hundreds of more images on the camera. And even more reports indicated that photos had been deleted off the camera before its recovery. This is true that the girls maybe use the camera as a flashlight to try and figure out where to go.

then this means that maybe foul play wasn't involved. Maybe the girls really did get lost and one of them got injured and they spent a week trying to figure out how to get out of the jungle. It's also entirely possible that if foul play was somehow involved, it wasn't actually Lisanne or Chris taking the pictures. Okay, so

Just when you thought the digital camera couldn't get more disturbing, authorities discovered that one photo, just one photo of the 100 pictures taken on the digital camera was deleted. So the file names of the photos were numbered.

The first photo taken on the hike on April 1st was image number 499. The next photo, image number 500, and so on. Image number 509 was missing from the camera. This is very strange for this particular image to be missing.

And that's because this is the very image that is between the final daytime photo taken on April 1st and the first nighttime photo taken on April 8th. And this is the only photo that is clearly missing from the camera's memory. What's even more troubling is that the photo has never been recovered, even today.

And image number 509 wasn't deleted on the camera itself. It's not just the photo was deleted from the camera. It's the particular photo that was deleted. This is the one photograph that would fit right between the last shots of the girls during the daytime on April 1st and then the start of the 90 photos taken at night one week later.

This photo was intentionally deleted off the digital camera. It seems very unlikely that the girls themselves deleted the photo, given the fact we know they experienced trouble on April 1st based on the 911 calls made from their cell phones. It seems like the very last thing that would be on their minds during an emergency like this is deleting images from their camera.

Now, once authorities saw what was on the cell phones and the digital camera, they swarmed the area where the backpack was found. They wanted to see if they could locate any additional evidence or some property belonging to either Lisanne or Chris. And pretty quickly after starting their search of the same area, they found additional evidence of the girls.

Chris's denim shorts, zipped and neatly folded, were discovered on a rock a few kilometers away from where Lisanne's backpack was found. At least, that was what the Panama police reported. Now, a local man later on reported that the denim shorts weren't neatly folded on a rock, but instead, they were found floating along the river.

which on the surface might not be a major detail. But in my opinion, whether or not the shorts were zipped and neatly folded on a rock tells me a completely different story than if they were found floating in the river. Because if they were zipped and folded, that tells me Chris took them off for whatever reason and placed the shorts on top of the rock on her own.

And if they were found floating in the river, well, that tells me that she likely didn't take the shorts off herself. Something else happened. I think either scenario would help to explain whether this was an accident or whether foul play is involved. Zipped and neatly folded tells me this was an accident. Floating in the river tells me maybe there is foul play.

Two months later, also very close to where Lisanne's backpack was discovered, a pelvis bone and a hiking boot containing a human foot were found. Soon after, more than 30 widely scattered human bones were found in the surrounding area.

The pelvis bone and the foot found inside the hiking boot were identified through DNA testing as belonging to Lisanne. The other 33 bones found in the area were all tested and found to belong to both Lisanne and Chris. DNA tests conclusively identified the human remains as the missing girls.

Here's where we need to talk about the forensic pathology and forensic anthropology of the case. So Lisanne's bones and skeletal remains appear to anthropologists like they had naturally decomposed. We know this because there was still small amounts of flesh attached to the bone, which is what we usually see in cases of human decomposition.

It's natural for there to be small remnants of flesh left behind on the bone as it decays. These remains were exposed to the jungle's elements for several months before they were discovered. So it's not unusual with the state of decomposition that we see in Lysane for there to be only bone left. But what is unusual is how Chris's remains were discovered.

Unlike Lisanne, Chris's remains and bones were white. They appeared to the forensic anthropologists as having been bleached. They were so white. Her remains were starkingly white. They looked nothing like Lisanne's remains. There's also been unofficial reports made that Chris's bones had traces of phosphorus on them.

Phosphorus and calcium work together in our bodies to build strong bones. So with the presence of phosphorus still on Chris's bones, from a pathology standpoint, this may suggest a different time of death between the girls. There was also no signs or evidence that suggested that any animals had picked at the remains.

which is questionable because you'd think if human remains were in the jungle for months that there would be some obvious signs of animals getting to them. But we didn't see that here. Maybe suggesting that the bones were placed there after the flesh was removed. So we need to go back to the DNA testing that was done on the bones found in the area near the backpack.

When forensics tested the bones for DNA, they also found DNA from three unknown people. This means that in addition to Lisanne's DNA and Chris's DNA, investigators also found three unknown profiles on other remains in the same area of the jungle.

This means or suggests that Lisanne and Chris weren't the only victims who turned up near the river. There were at least three other remains with different DNA profiles in that same exact area. Investigators were unable to recover any large bones from either of the girls.

They didn't find any skulls, no femurs, just small pieces that were, of course, really decomposed. Because they weren't able to recover any large bones or really any significant pieces of their bodies, forensic pathologists were unable to determine a cause of death for either Lisanne or Chris.

There was just no way to determine what happened or what caused their deaths. They weren't even able to establish a definitive time of death for either girl. There was no evidence that this was a hiking accident, and there was no evidence of foul play, simply based on the condition of their bodies.

Now, after the discovery of the remains, authorities continued to question locals. They spoke to tour guides in the area, and they even reached out to other hikers who were out there on the trails the same day that Lisanne and Chris disappeared. But none of the interviews have turned up any new evidence or leads in the case.

The only solid pieces of evidence that put together any sort of timeline in the case are the two cell phones and the photos from the digital camera. And honestly, I'm not sure if the camera and cell phones presents more answers than it does questions about what really happened to Lisanne and Chris.

Months after the remains were discovered, authorities in Panama announced that they believed the girls died from a hiking accident. No officials have come out to say that they believe the girls were victims of foul play. But just when you thought that this was the end of the story...

Three months after the original remains were discovered, a ball of Lisanne's skin was reportedly found in the jungle near the trail the girls were on. The ball of skin allegedly does not match the expected five months of decomposition, suggesting the ball of skin had been preserved elsewhere.

Even though officials from Panama have said that Lassane and Chris died from some sort of terrible hiking accident, there are so many people out there who speculate something else happened to the girls. So what are those possible theories? Well, first, that both girls were injured and they eventually starved to death. We saw activity on their cell phones for one week after their disappearance.

It's possible that both girls got injured on the first, tried to call 911 to get help, and with no cell phone reception, eventually with no water and no food, they starved to death out there in the jungle. Theory number two, they got lost.

Even though by all accounts both girls were experienced hikers, neither one of them had been to that particular hiking trail before. They weren't from Panama. They had never been there before. Maybe they should have had a guide with them. It's possible that the girls got lost on April 1st. Once they realized they had no idea where they were, they tried calling for help.

But again, there was no cell phone service out there, so they weren't getting any help. Theory number three, one of the girls got injured and the other one went to go look for help and ultimately got lost. I think this is the one that, at least for me, is the less likely of scenarios because there's no evidence that suggests that the girls were ever separated from one another, right?

And most of their remains, at least the remains that they recovered, were found together in the same or very close locations, suggesting that they stayed together the entire time. I think the only aspect of the case that points to this particular theory are the numerous failed attempts to get into Chris's iPhone.

We know that there were over 70 failed attempts to access the phone. Maybe it was Lisanne who was the one trying to get into the cell phone to call for help after her cell phone died. Now, there's also theories about foul play, that they were kidnapped and held captive somewhere in or near the jungle itself.

Going back to the cell phone evidence, the girls were alive for at least a week or their cell phones were being used for at least a week. They could have been kidnapped by some locals and held captive somewhere until they were eventually killed a week or so after their disappearance. And then their belongings and bodies were scattered.

We know parts of their bodies were found in different locations. Some of their remains were found downstream. Others were found upstream along the river. Other theories about what happened to Lisanne and Chris range from they were captured by local cannibals, a tour guide killed them, they were eaten by large animals, and that a local gang killed them. If you read about this story anywhere on the internet,

be prepared to go down a major rabbit hole of possibilities. But even with all the different theories and possibilities about what really happened, the main problem people have is that we're not sure if this was a hiking accident. How could Lisanne and Chris have gotten so lost on a hiking trail that wasn't regarded as difficult?

A hiking trail that by all accounts was clearly labeled. And why, after one week, was nobody able to find them? How far could they have really gotten to where no other hikers or people out in the area couldn't find them? And how far could they have gone off the main hiking trail? I just have so many unanswered questions here.

This is a really tragic and just downright frustrating story because we may never know exactly what happened to Lisanne and Chris out there. Because their bodies were so badly decomposed and had been exposed to the elements of the jungle possibly for months before,

Not even an autopsy or a forensic pathologist can determine the exact cause of death. A cause of death in the case would at least be able to officially rule out the possibility of homicide or foul play. But without it, I don't think we can definitively say exactly why these girls died or what happened to them.

With so many theories and rabbit holes to go down on this case, I want to hear from you. I want to hear what you think happened to Lisanne Froon and Chris Kramers. The case has officially been ruled by authorities as a terrible hiking accident. But if you're like me, you have a lot of unanswered questions. So let me know what you think.

Connect with the show on Instagram at Forensic Tales. Shoot me an email to Courtney at ForensicTales.com and share your thoughts about this week's case. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please stay healthy, stay safe, and take care of one another.

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