2 Girls Vanished on a Hiking Trip — 10 Weeks Later, Their Camera Reveals a Chilling Discovery | HO

On a misty April morning in 2014, two young Dutch women set out for what was supposed to be a simple hike into the lush hills above Boquete, Panama. Chris Kremers, 21, and Lisanne Froon, 22, were bright, adventurous, and full of hope. They left behind notes, snapped photos with fellow travelers, and told friends they’d be back before sunset.

But as the day faded, so did any trace of them. What happened next would become one of the most haunting and perplexing missing persons cases of the decade—one that would grip the world, raise disturbing questions, and leave a trail of chilling clues, including a camera whose contents only deepened the mystery.

The Disappearance

Chris and Lisanne weren’t thrill-seekers looking for danger. They were students from Amersfoort, Netherlands, who had saved for months to travel to Panama, learn Spanish, and volunteer with underprivileged children. The day they vanished, they set out with a small backpack, a bottle of water, their phones, a camera, and a couple of sandwiches—hardly the gear for an extended trek. Locals saw them in good spirits, accompanied for a while by a friendly dog from a nearby café. By evening, the dog had returned alone. The girls had not.

At first, no one panicked. Maybe they’d taken a different trail, or stayed out late. But as night fell and the girls failed to return messages or show up for a planned meeting with a local guide the next morning, concern turned to alarm. Their families, back in the Netherlands, grew frantic. By April 6th, five days after their disappearance, the search was in full swing.

Dutch investigators, search-and-rescue dogs, helicopters, and drones joined Panamanian authorities and local volunteers in combing the dense, cloud-shrouded forest. A $30,000 reward was announced. Still, the jungle yielded nothing. It was as if Chris and Lisanne had vanished into thin air.

The First Clues

For over two months, there was only silence. Then, on June 14th, a woman from a remote indigenous village near Alto Romero found a blue backpack resting on a rock by a riverbank. It was dry, despite recent heavy rains, and looked as if it had been deliberately placed. Inside were two pairs of sunglasses, $88 in cash, two bras, Lisanne’s passport, two phones, and a Canon digital camera. Everything was dry, clean, and intact. It was the first real break in the case, and it only raised more questions.

Why was the backpack found miles from the girls’ intended route? Why was it dry and undamaged? Why were the electronics still working, and the contents so neatly packed?

The Phones and the Timeline of Desperation

Investigators immediately examined the phones. The data told a story of escalating desperation. On April 1st, the day they went missing, the first attempt to call 112, Panama’s emergency number, was logged at 4:39 p.m. The call didn’t connect—there was no signal. Over the next several days, dozens more attempts were made from both phones, sometimes minutes apart, sometimes hours.

Lisanne’s Samsung phone was last used on April 5th. After that, only Chris’s iPhone showed activity—but something was wrong. Whoever was using the phone kept entering the wrong PIN, day after day, until April 11th, when the phone was switched on one final time for over an hour. Then, nothing.

Who was using Chris’s phone? Why couldn’t they unlock it? If it was Chris, why not use her own code? If it was Lisanne, wouldn’t she have known it? Or was it someone else entirely, someone who had the phone but didn’t know the code?

The Camera: A Window Into the Unknown

The most unsettling discovery came from Lisanne’s camera. The memory card contained a series of ordinary daylight photos from the hike—smiling selfies, forest paths, sun-dappled leaves. Then, nothing for eight days. On the night of April 8th, between 1:00 and 4:00 a.m., the camera captured over 90 images, all in darkness.

Most were nearly black, but some revealed eerie, inexplicable scenes: a large rock with a twig wrapped in plastic bags, what appeared to be a backpack strap and a small mirror arranged on a rock, and—most hauntingly—the back of Chris’s head, her hair tidy, her skin pale, her face turned away from the camera. Was she asleep, unconscious, or worse?

Other images seemed random—branches, rocks, the jungle floor. Some looked as if the camera was being pointed blindly into the dark, as if by someone disoriented or in distress. Why so many pictures, all at night, so long after they vanished? Were they trying to signal rescuers with the flash? Document their surroundings for a possible rescue? Or was someone else behind the camera, recording something far more sinister?

The Grim Discoveries

As the weeks dragged on, the jungle began to yield its secrets. Chris’s denim shorts were found atop a rock on the far side of a river, several kilometers from where the backpack was discovered. At first, reports claimed the shorts had been neatly folded, as if placed with intention. Later photos showed they were left haphazardly, casting doubt on that theory.

Then came the most devastating finds: skeletal remains. Lisanne’s foot, still inside a hiking boot, parts of her pelvis, and several ribs and foot bones belonging to Chris were found along the riverbanks, scattered and incomplete.

No clothing or personal items were near the remains. Forensic analysis found no signs of trauma, violence, or animal interference. The cause of death was officially listed as exposure, but the lack of evidence—no injuries, no struggle, no definitive explanation—left the case wide open.

Theories and Unanswered Questions

Theories about what happened to Chris and Lisanne abound. The most accepted is that they became lost, wandered off the trail, and succumbed to the brutal jungle environment—dehydration, exhaustion, exposure. The evidence supports this: the desperate emergency calls, the nighttime photos, the timeline of their phones’ activity.

But there are darker theories. Some believe the girls were victims of foul play, perhaps lured off the trail or targeted by someone in the remote, sometimes dangerous region.

The failed PIN attempts, the deliberate placement of the backpack, and the strange nighttime photos have fueled speculation of a third party’s involvement. Some claim to see shadowy figures in the photos; others point to the region’s reputation for crime and the possibility of a cover-up.

The investigation by Panamanian authorities was widely criticized. Delays in the search, poor evidence management, and a hasty closure of the case left many questions unanswered. Dutch investigators raised doubts about the official narrative, pointing to inconsistencies and unexplored leads. To this day, amateur sleuths dissect the photos, analyze timelines, and debate every clue online.

The Legacy of a Mystery

For the families of Chris Kremers and Lisanne Froon, the tragedy is compounded by the lack of closure. They wanted answers; instead, they got silence and more questions. The haunting images, the scattered bones, and the trail that led nowhere are all that remain of two lives full of promise.

Their story is a cautionary tale about the risks of adventure, the unpredictability of the natural world, and the limits of human understanding. It’s also a story about the search for justice, the frustration of unanswered questions, and the enduring power of a mystery that refuses to be solved.

As the years pass, the disappearance of Chris and Lisanne remains one of the most chilling unsolved cases in modern memory—a puzzle with missing pieces, a story that lingers in the shadows of the Panamanian jungle, and a reminder that sometimes, the answers we seek are lost forever.

What really happened on that trail? Who took the final photos? Who kept trying to unlock the phone? The jungle keeps its secrets, but the world is still asking.