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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.
And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk, and I am absolutely loving it.
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Visit audible.com slash morbid. Some cases fade from headlines.
Some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers and on my podcast The Deck I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice.
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Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this...
Is a mini morbid. Whoa. Mini, mini, mini, mini, mini morbid.
Mini Morbid, Mini Morbid, Mini Morbid! You guys love that song, and so do we.
Mini, mini, mini, mini, mini mall bird. We got a couple of people ask, and I didn't even tell you this until right now.
Oh, tell me. If we could make that available as a ringtone. to the patreons and i was like yeah how do we do that i don't know but i'm gonna figure it out and i'm gonna make it available to the patreons because Imagine if people used it as an alarm sound That'd be amazing And the human population woke up to my voice I just want to put it out there Ash You wrote a hit.
You wrote, composed, and produced a hit.
I would like to thank the Academy for considering me.
It's very impressive, you know. I'm the next Mary J. Blige.
You are. I don't know why she's the first person that popped into my head.
Wow, that was like... whale does she sing don't go chasing waterfalls nope that's tlc i'm gonna go ahead and cut that out We are going to, I just want to quickly start off on kind of a giant bummer note.
Oh, I know. But I think it's important to say.
Today, while we record, we all woke up to the news that there was a pretty horrific terrorist attack. in New Zealand, in Christchurch.
We love New Zealand. I love New Zealand.
Some of our greatest listeners. I think I want to say like 49 people are.
Dead. Yeah, I read. And the last thing that I read.
So we just wanted to quickly put out there that New Zealand, we love you.
Yes, our thoughts are with the world knows this isn't you.
This is one really, really, really bad apple.
We all have them. Trust me. We're in the United States, so we know all about it.
We really are. And we're really sorry. And we wanted to show support for you guys and show support for the Muslim community in New Zealand.
Absolutely. So yeah, so we just wanted to put that out there.
It was important. But we'll move on from it.
I think the first thing we're going to do is thank a few Patreon donors.
Because again, we're working our way through and we decided to do five an episode now so that we don't bog you guys down with too many names all at once.
But we'll get to everybody. And like we said, it's more exciting to hear your name.
It is. It's more fun. And it's going to last forever.
So it's fun. Forever. So I will start this off.
We have four members of the Window Latching Coven coming your way.
Whoa. First one is Kenzie Rouser. Kenzie Rouser, you are... You're arousing to our senses.
Yeah. Thanks, Kenzie. You know what? It's arousing, Kenzie, that you donated to our Patreon.
So thank you. I'm uncomfortable. But we love you.
The next one coming up here, the next Patronus is Eleanor Painter.
Eleanor Painter, you could paint me a Patreon picture.
Any day. You've painted your way right into our hearts.
Yeah, you did. Thank you, Eleanor. Thanks.
The next one is Ashley Prophet. Ashley.
My name is Ashley. As a fellow Ashley, I would like you, or I would like to thank you for giving us profit.
Thank you, Ashley Prophet. Thank you so much, Ashley.
You're welcome. No one calls me Ashley, though.
That was jarring. Our next Patronus is Taylor Jeffs.
Taylor Jeffs. I hope that you're not like Warren Jeffs.
I was just thinking that too. I immediately went there in my brain.
But if you are, thanks for donating and keep a big radius of distance from us.
Thanks, Taylor. Thank you so much. thank you so much Taylor I know you're not like Warren Jeffs I know that but With the last name.
This is a true crime podcast. This is the first place we go.
So the last Patronus that we're going to thank today. is Taya Edwards, who upgraded to a jagged little bitch.
Taya. Taya. Taya. Welcome, girl. We love you, Taya.
Yeah, we do. I also love your name. That's a cool-ass name.
That is a great name. We've had a lot of great names.
Guys. We fucking love you and your names and I'm so humbled by your donations and your...
Just everything. I love you guys. The reason we're able to do this is because of you.
So we love you so much. And we're going to be doing a listener stories episode two coming up very shortly because we're getting a lot of really cool listener stories.
We're reading all of them just so you know, even if we haven't responded. yet we will be responding just to make sure people don't mind us sharing them yeah so keep an eye out for that if you've sent one in or if you have one that's just been brewing under the surface Now's the time.
Send it to us. It's the time. We're going to do our first listener story coming up.
So yeah, that's about all the business. So let's just jump right into this, huh?
Yeah. What's your mini morbid about? So today I'm going to be talking about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The missing girls in Panama. Oh, snizzity snappity.
I'm talking about 21-year-old Chris Kremers and 22-year-old Lisanne Froon.
Oh, my God. Now, this story is bonkers bananas, Cuckoo Nut Man.
Am I going to be able to sleep tonight by myself?
It's unsolved. It's unsolved. Although, if you talk to authorities over there, it's solved.
But a lot of people are like, mm-mm. mm-mm doesn't make sense there's a lot of twists and turns here oh we love a loopy road we're just going to start this right off Let's go.
Both of them, Chris Kremers and Lee Sanfroon, are hikers, and they were tourists from the Netherlands. wait a second I know this case crazy case oh I'm afraid of this case it is a scary case you suck I know They both went missing in early 2014 while taking a hike in Panama.
Scattered and scant remains were eventually found, but how they died and the circumstances surrounding their disappearance is still... hotly contested today.
Oh, damn it. I'm so freaked out. So Lisa Ann Froon was born to Peter and Denny Froon on September 24th, 1991 in England.
Amser Fort in the Netherlands. Those who knew her described her as brave, She'd take risks.
She would go skydiving. That's dope. Super athletic, especially in volleyball.
She was a huge volleyball star. And she was highly intelligent.
She also had a very athletic physique. She was six feet tall.
Oh, wow. And she loved photography. After graduating from college with a degree in applied sciences and psychology, she moved in with her friend Chris Kremers, who she worked at some cafe with.
They worked together. Oh, okay. Chris Kremers was born August 9th, 1992, to Hans and Rolly. in Amservoort in the Netherlands as well.
She was described as very outgoing. She was an actress at one point.
She had strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes.
She had two brothers, one older, one younger.
In college at Utrecht University, she studied cultural social education and focused on art education.
Wow. So both of them are like super smart.
I was going to say. Super athletic. From everything I read, it looks like Lee San was like the more risk taker.
Of the two, Chris would go along with things, but she was a little more cautious when it came to the stuff.
So to celebrate Lisanne's recent graduation in the spring of 2014...
The two of them planned like an epic trip to Panama.
They were going to volunteer as social workers.
Because not only were they super smart, super athletic, super brave, they were also super philanthropic.
I love that word. I know, I do too. The trip would focus on doing some philanthropic work with the locals while there and they also wanted to like learn spanish in a real world setting right so they i don't know if i'm assuming they knew some spanish and they just kind of wanted to use it in the real world to kind of get better at it.
They both saved for six straight months for the trip and they planned to stay in Panama for six weeks.
On March 15th, 2014, They departed from Amsterdam and landed in Panama.
For the first two weeks, they just toured Panama.
Because when they first arrived, the administrators from the program they were volunteering for weren't ready to receive them yet.
So when they got there, they were like, what do we do?
So they just hung out and like, you know, toured Panama, did touristy things.
I don't know if it's going wild. I know.
I don't know if you guys can hear it. My neighbor's dog is like losing its shit.
It's going cray cray. After the two weeks, they then arrived in Boquete on the 29th.
This was the beginning of the one month of volunteering they were going to do with children.
At this point, they were staying with a host family there and they were planning to stay with this family for about four weeks.
April 1st, 2014. This is when the story really begins.
At around 11am, Chris and Lisanne set out on a hike. never a good plan just don't hike everybody fuck that if we learn anything from diet love pass don't do it just don't Now, you need a tour guide to hike as a tourist in Panama.
Because it's super intense. Like the jungles are nuts.
Oh. Like nuts. So they really do recommend like you have a tour guide.
But they didn't go with a tour guide. Well, no, not this time.
And this was really dangerous to do. And actually, one of the last journal entries that Chris wrote in her journal was... quote, go with the Panamanian flow.
This hike took them into the clouded forests that surround the Baru volcano.
That sounds pretty intense. It is very intense.
Now these kind of forests, clouded forests, are just straight up like rainforest style.
Oh. There's flash floods. There's mudslides.
It can be dangerous because there's a lot of rain that happens.
But if you catch it in the nice part, it's beautiful.
This trail was not far from Boquete where they were staying and they even took their host family's dog, Blue, with them.
Oh, they did? Yeah. I didn't know that. Blue was a husky kind of dog, and apparently they were intending to hike to the Continental Divide, which was like a four-hour hike each way.
Okay. And once you get to the Continental Divide, it's like you can look over to these amazing views and all this good stuff.
But if you go on the other side, it's just like pandemonium.
Like, it's just, like, so many jungles and just not trails that you want to take and stuff.
Oh, shit. So this trail they took is known for the most part and has like three parts to it.
The first part is pretty open and has like beautiful scenery.
And pastures that just like open up around it.
So it's like apparently amazing. It's pretty easy to hike at this point.
Okay. Then you enter the straight up jungle.
Which I'd be like, I'm leaving now. Yeah, I'd be like, and scene.
My frappuccino's gone. Yeah, done. Vegetation, insects, animals, everywhere.
Insect spy. Yeah, and like... Panama insects.
Yeah, it's no good. So that takes about an hour and a half.
And then you enter the cloud forest. Okay.
Which is supposed to be fucking amazing.
The cloud forest is literally what it sounds like.
Then another 30 minutes into that, you're going up the mountain and that's when you're above the clouds.
Oh, that's so cool. It's supposed to be unreal.
I can't imagine. But if you go across the divide, like I said, then you're entering the thick jungles with trails not made for tourists.
There's like canyons, ravines, gorges and shit that you just, the only way across most of these things on that side of the continental divide. is by these things called monkey bridges.
Oh, no. Which are just straight up rope.
And all it is is two ropes, like rope on either side of you that you hold and then one rope that you stand on.
So you're holding them and then just walking across.
Now, when they set out on this hike, They only had one bottle of water and no food with them.
Interesting. They were planning on going on a short on this hike.
That's it. Like hiking the four hours up, hiking the four hours back.
Girl, I eat every four hours. I mean, I do too, but you know. they didn't pack for like some crazy hike.
They had to get up to this thing, see the sites and come back down.
Now, the pair even posted on social media that they were going to walk around Boquete before this.
Mm-hmm. And there are confirmed witnesses that say they saw them having brunch with two other Dutchmen before going out on the trail.
Okay. So originally when people hear this, they're like, who the fuck are those dudes?
Like, something's weird. Yeah, I doubt it.
But they apparently knew these men. You can never look at the first suspect.
Yeah, you can't. And they had photos with them, like, hanging out at the beach and stuff.
Like, they were actually, like, acquaintances.
So it wasn't strange. Things took a turn for the really bad when evening fell.
For the really bad. And Blue returned home without Chris or Lisanne.
Oh, nope. The host family was freaking out.
That's wild that he, like, yeah, he ran back home.
Go Blue. Go blue. The host family started freaking out and they eventually got in touch with Lisanne's parents.
Okay. Because they were like, we don't know what's going on here.
Lisanne's parents immediately became worried when they were not getting any messages back from her and they She wasn't contacting them.
They couldn't contact her. The family had been using the WhatsApp to keep in touch throughout the trip.
Yeah, that makes sense. So the next day the police were finally called.
They were called by a tour guide named Feliciano. who was supposed to meet the girls in the morning at about 8am, but when they failed to show up, he became really concerned.
The next day. Yeah. So they were meeting him because they had arranged for him to take them on a hike at like 8 a.m.
So why did they go out on their own the day before?
I mean, like for a short hike, I get that.
But that's not even still. It's like you need guides for this kind of stuff.
Even for the one before the indigenous roots.
You should have a guide. It's just like one of those things.
You should really have a guide. But maybe they were just like, what?
And it's like, you're going on a hike at 8 a.m. the next morning.
Maybe chill. Yeah, I know people that like really love a good hike though.
Yeah, I don't know. That's just a strange little detail that people were like, huh? the police went straight to the host family and they determined immediately that chris and lee sand had never had never returned from the hike like they were telling them the truth because at first they were like April 3rd is when the searching began.
They utilized aerial searching. They had locals, including farmers and indigenous tribes. to help with like a decent-sized search.
Uh-huh. April 6th, both of the girls' parents flew into Panama, accompanied by Dutch police as well.
Oh, wow. The Dutch police force came with special forces, detectives, and canine units.
Shit. For 10 days straight, all of these entities searched but came up with nothing. absolutely nothing.
Not a shred of evidence that they were even in that jungle.
That's weird. Nothing. Ten days straight.
It's a huge jungle, though, yeah? Yeah, but they were going on the... where they were supposed to be going.
They couldn't find any. And they were using aerial searches.
They found nothing. Wow. Their parents released a $30,000 reward for any information about their whereabouts at this point.
Oh, that's so sad. It wasn't until 10 weeks later on June 14th That a backpack was brought into the police.
The backpack was found by a Ngobi woman.
And Ngobi is like the local indigenous tribe.
She had found it near a riverbank in Alto Romero in the region of Bocas del Toro.
This place was 12 hours by foot from the Continental Divide.
They were hiking to the continental divide.
And stopping and then turning around. This place where her backpack was found was 12 hours by foot from the continental divide.
Okay, so they would have had to do that rope bridge.
They would have had to walk 12 hours from the Continental Divide.
Yeah, so clearly they didn't walk that far.
It's very far. So the woman who brought it into the police said she knew that bag wasn't there the day before while she was tending to her rice paddy near the riverbank.
Oh, shit. And it's not like it was in the... She said it didn't look like... It looked like somebody put it there.
Right. After a search of the contents... which included $83 in cash, two bras, two pairs of sunglasses, Lisanne's passport, a water bottle, a Canon Powershot XS270 camera, Lisanne's Samsung Galaxy phone, and Chris' iPhone 4,
Everything was dry as a bone and in great condition.
That's weird. It was determined that the bag did belong to Lisanne.
There's two bras in there? Yeah. I mean, I think they were like bras or like bikini tops or something.
I was like, that's kind of weird. It was the phones and the camera that provided the most evidence, but also the most confusion.
Hate that. I know what's happening and I already know. once data was collected from the phones it was discovered that both girls had attempted to call the police several times oh i hate that any time that like a camera is found it gives me the super heebs i get so excited when a camera is found No, I know.
No, me too. As soon as that happens, I'm like, yes.
Because you're like, literally like, what is happening?
But it's so creepy to look at the last hours of somebody's life.
Oh, yeah, because... Like, through their eyeballs.
Like, we'll post a few pictures that are off this camera to the Instagram.
No! And it really is like you see them like being very carefree on the hike for a lot of it.
And you're just like, oh, God, you don't know so badly.
And you look at it and it's not like you don't know what's about to happen.
It's like no one knows what happened. Right.
Like not even no one. Oh, stop. I have goosebumps all over me.
So the local emergency number was 112. And they were calling that, and they were also calling 911, which Panama also uses.
Okay. At 4.39 p.m., which was only a couple hours after they had set out on the hike, Chris's phone made the first call to police.
Which was only, it was only a few hours after they had gone on the hike.
Lisanne made the second call at 4.51 p.m.
So only a few minutes later. Right. Unfortunately, there was pretty much no reception whatsoever.
On April 3rd, which is when the searching had begun officially, another call was made to police and lasted one second before the signal cut out oh no So while people were searching for them, they were calling the police.
Oh my god, I hate that. On April 5th, Lisanne's battery died.
So her phone was done. Chris's phone was switched on several times to search for signal, but no more calls were made.
On April 6th, this is a weird thing. On April 6th, several incorrect pin codes were entered into Chris's phone.
Bye. Yeah. After all these attempts, the phone never had the correct pin code entered ever again.
Nope, literally canceled. So that's when someone started trying to get into the phone and couldn't put in the right pin.
Why were you even trying to get into the phone?
I don't know. Now, there is... That sounds creepy as hell, and it could be creepy as hell.
Sure does. But my theory about it... is that possibly Chris was incapacitated or dead.
And the other person was trying to get into it.
And Lisanne was trying to get into her phone to call for help because her battery had died. and maybe she didn't know her pin.
Okay. Always know your friend's pin. I know.
See, I don't know a lot of mine and now I'm like, damn, I gotta know everybody's pin.
So yeah, so it might have been that or...
Somebody else could be trying to get in the phone.
Right. Over three days between April 7th and April 10th, 77 emergency call attempts were made from Chris's iPhone.
Wow. On April 11th, the iPhone was switched on at 10.51 a.m., and just over an hour later, it turned off for good.
Because it died? Don't know what just turned off.
Oh. So the phones had very spooky and very confusing evidence, but the camera was spooky on a whole other level.
I know. Lisanne's Canon camera showed that the pair had wandered into the trail by the Continental Divide and possibly became lost.
April 8th was when things obviously turned for the worst.
No thank you. This was one week after they were officially declared missing.
And at this time, 90 flash photographs were taken on the camera between 1am and 4am.
Now that's bananas. This would average out to be one photograph taken every two minutes.
Wow. A lot of photos were completely dark and some people think that this was because there was a search party wandering around there that very night looking for them.
And they were trying to signal them with the flash.
Another theory is that they were trying to light their way with the flash.
Right. Because it was pitch black. Absolutely pitch black.
And a third theory is that there were wild animals that they were trying to scare off with the flash.
Okay, yeah. All of those things make sense.
Like jaguars or something, like trying to... all of these are scary can you imagine having to fucking try to ward off a jaguar while you're lost and possibly hurt oh my god and it was raining oh my god yeah A couple of the photos, however, show them near a river in like a ravine.
A few other photos were odd and confusing.
They show a small twig with like wrappers and like a plastic bag stuck to it on top of a rock.
And another photo showed toilet paper and a mirror on another rock.
Hate that. Then the photos got scary. One photo showed Chris with blood on her temple.
Hate it. And so it was obvious. Now people are like, that's either a photo of her.
Well, you know, she obviously got hurt, but people are like, is she dead?
In that photo? You can't tell? Like you don't know.
Because I think you only see like this. You don't even see her face.
I think you can just tell it's her because of her hair.
Okay. So that's weird. A theory about the photos is that there was a method to this madness, though.
Because there was like a sequence in all the photos that they would take like a close up, then a bunch, you know, up. and then a bunch to the side and then just start the sequence over.
And so some experts think there may have been like a message or – for some reason they did that.
Okay. Because it's like a pattern. Sure.
Nobody's been able to figure it out, though.
There is one photo that is thought to be a body down in the gorge.
Oh. The theory is that Lee San was taking a photo of Chris.
Oh my god. Possibly. or somebody was that's so horrible and i've seen the photo and it's like hard to tell uh-huh Because it's so dark, but you can see something that is like body-like down there.
But it's very hard to tell. Don't. Want to look at it.
It's very hard to tell. Even if you saw it, I don't even know if you would see a body.
I'm so creeped out right now. Now, during the course of the investigation, they did discover too that there was one missing photo in the series of photos taken.
It's among the photos taken during the day, on the first day.
The numbers of the photos go from... 0507, 0508, and then 0510.
So they deleted one of them? Well, number 510 was taken a week later on April 8th at 1.30 in the morning.
Okay. So that missing one, we have no, it happened in the interim between those daytime photos the first day.
And April 8th at 1.30 in the morning. That's weird.
Like a week later. Right. And the thing about this is obviously it's deleted.
Yeah. One, they wouldn't delete a photo.
There's plenty of ridiculous photos. on there that mean nothing and they didn't delete any of them.
And two, they would not be sitting there worrying about deleting photos.
And then also, even if they did delete a photo, they could, like, you know, investigators and experts can... get that photo back cover it off that memory card so they tried to it was nowhere on that memory card what does that mean i have no idea But people are like that it had to have been deleted from like remotely or something from a computer maybe. what or something else they were like it doesn't make sense that they can't bring that photo back off that memory card that's really weird And it's very convenient that it's not like one of the random photos during the day or one of the random photos during the night.
It's in the interim between the two. The day and the night.
Where we don't know what the fuck happened.
I'm scared. It's just weird. So another search was immediately conducted after they got that backpack.
Yeah. And they searched where the backpack was found.
When they got there, neatly folded on a rock with the zipper still up was Chris's shorts.
Okay. Folded neatly on a rock. okay not washed up on the side of the shore right folded on a rock with the zipper up yeah They were found by two other Nogobi women, and two months after this, close to where the backpack was found, a boot was discovered i know with a fucking foot inside of it i knew that the foot had a sock on it and the bones were discovered to be fractured Oh.
I believe this was Lee San's foot that was found.
Oh, my. Near this gruesome discovery, a pelvic bone was also found behind a tree.
Dutch authorities were able to confirm that these remains belonged to both Chris and Lisanne.
The pelvic bone was Chris's. Okay. Along the river, more than 33 bones were then found.
28 of them were from Lisanne's foot. Oh my god.
Lisanne's bones still had skin attached.
But the pelvic bone that was determined to belong to Chris had been bleached.
Okay, that's fucking weird. Yeah. Now, these were found by indigenous people.
Right. One Panama search team was called to search, but the weather became too gnarly and it was called off after like three days.
So they left it to the indigenous tribes to kind of go about finding things.
The special prosecutor made it legal for this to happen so they could take part in the... in the search okay these bones were found in a place that was really isolated and was a full day's trip away from where they began their hike And why would the pelvic bone be bleached?
Well, it's bizarre. The whole thing is bizarre because...
One, where the fuck are the rest of the bones?
Right. Like, why do we just have foot bones and a pelvic bone?
That's weird. And 33 were found, but, like...
Why were Chris's bones bleached? And why was there some skin attached to Lisanne's, like...
Why in the elements for that long would there be that skin attached?
Right. So this can't be explained. Now, the bones being bleached...
Cannot be explained away by the sun or the elements.
I was going to ask that and then I didn't know if it was a stupid question.
Well, because other bones were found older than hers and were not bleached.
Were they in the same amount of sunlight?
Yeah. Okay. And neither were Lee Sands, who were in the same area as her.
That just scared me. Like Lisanne's bones were in the same area as Chris's and obviously were near each other and hers were not bleached at all.
And no animal scavenging marks were found on the bones either.
Which makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
And it was determined that the bleaching occurred probably by a phosphorus-lime concoction.
This led some experts to think this may have been connected to, like, you know, possibly like a cartel or something scary because they're known to, you know, usually really advanced criminals are known to use lime to hasten decomp.
My heart is beating really fast. So police pretty quickly came to the theory that they had become lost from the trail.
One of them, likely Chris based on the photo, got injured. eventually the other one either became injured or just couldn't survive and they both really had no And one of them or both of them slowly just died of dehydration, starvation, exposure, or whatever injury they received.
They refused to release the autopsies, which were obviously limited anyways.
The families were pissed. That they immediately treated this as an accident and not a criminal investigation.
Yeah, because they were like, no. They were pissed that the guide was never investigated because he was the first person to see them. in the search like he was with them with the indigenous people and they found this the bones Oh, and he participated in all the searches.
This guy that was supposed to be their guide.
That's weird. Did he have any contact with them previously?
Yeah, because they set up the hike with him.
Right. He was someone who actually found some of the belongings as well.
So the families hired a local lawyer to help.
And what they found was that this guy had some serious allegations of harassment against him.
And that he had been known to hang out with local female tourists that were using the guide service against protocol, like outside of being a guide.
Oh, I didn't know that. Super unprofessional dude.
The lawyer really focused on this and the remains being bleached, but the forensics was ignored by the other side.
That's rude. Now, that would have been it.
But I found a crazy article. It's actually like a series of articles from the Daily Beast article. who did like an intense investigation into this.
They even went to Panama and did the whole search.
And so they saw, too, that the official version of events, according to Panama's public ministry... which is the office of the state's attorney, is that Kris Kramers and Lisanne Froon were, quote, dragged to death in the Serpent River. and their bodies subsequently dismembered by scavengers.
That's what they're calling me happened.
Okay. But none of their bones had any markings.
Well, this whole thing has been publicly questioned by criminologists, journalists, and even... panamanian forensics teams who did the autopsies they all questioned this Yeah, that's weird.
Even the forensics people who did the autopsies are like, eh, no.
This is like very diet love posse. It really is.
There was also no chain of custody that was established for any of the stuff they found.
So nobody knows whose fucking hands it went into at any point.
Oh, that's fucked up. No fingerprints were ever recorded.
And there were fingerprints on the backpack.
And probably the phones. Yeah. And just all the forensic stuff.
This was a very botched investigation. Also, there's, like, the whole thing, no one thought, like, so you're saying that they were dragged in a river.
So they would have gone in with all their belongings.
Right. This backpack was found... Dry. Perfectly dry.
And it's like, how did her pants end up folded neatly?
Right. Like, no one's questioning that. And this is even more bonkers.
A copy of the Cherokee State Judicial Report, which is the original police report about this incident, was leaked online.
And the Daily Beast reported that based on an 18-month investigation by police detectives and prosecutors...
They clearly concluded that the Kremers-Froon case was a homicide and a crime against personal integrity.
Oh shit. The original police report for this case marks it as a homicide, not an accident.
How do you just change your mind about that?
They can change the cause of death. No, I know that, but like from a homicide to like, oops.
Well, I can tell you exactly why. They want people coming to Panama for tourism.
Oh, shit. If they're sitting there being like, oh, yeah, people getting murdered in the woods, they're going to lose tourists.
Wow. That's fucked. And so this whole thing, the fact that it was marked as a homicide initially, and then they're like, no, no, no, it's an accident.
They just fell. It's like, ah, that's 100% a cover-up.
And they also said, the district attorney said that, um...
They could reopen this case at any time if evidence was presented. like contradicting the accident theory.
Now, there's also a similar case to this in the way That makes people be like, huh?
It's like draws comparisons and people like, maybe this isn't.
So I'm going to give you a very brief overview of this case just so you can see.
It involved a 23-year-old named Catherine Johannet.
She was an American tourist, and she traveled to the same area of Panama as Chris and Lisanne.
One day, she decided to take a trail to Red Frog Beach.
She didn't return to her hostel that night, and authorities were immediately called.
After a short search, her body was found the following Sunday.
Oh, gosh. The autopsy said that she had suffered blunt force trauma to the back of her head and had been strangled with her own beach wrap.
Oh my god. Then she was dragged to a few hundred meters from the trail and left in heavy brush.
Obviously that was a homicide. Yeah. They couldn't even.
Like, how do you fucking argue that? And a lot of people point out that the three women even bear a certain physical resemblance.
Oh, shit. They're all tall, fair skinned and slender.
Like they all kind of resemble each other.
Oh, wow. And so people were thinking like, is there like a serial killer?
That's operating in the area, yeah. And in the Panamanian press, they've asked this.
That's actually been a thing. Now, including Lisanne and Chris, there have been at least 25 unsolved murders and disappearances in this part of Panama since 2009.
Victims include visitors from the US, the UK, Italy, and the Netherlands, and locals.
And the majority of them are women and children.
And children. Yeah. And people suggest that the number of disappeared could be way higher because nobody's found anybody.
All of these things, all these incidents have happened in the neighboring Cherokee and Boca sectors of the country.
And it's basically between the Talamanca Cordillera and the Caribbean coast.
Okay. In most of these cases, no bodies have been found.
So when no body's found, there's not going to be a huge investigation because you don't have a body.
Right. So there's that. And people, of course, are going to call back to the fact that Lisanne's backpack was found with the phones and cameras in it. and not stolen, and they're going to look at that and say, well, it can't be foul play. all their electronics were left in their backpack.
And if somebody was trying to get into her phone, why didn't they just take it with them?
But when people talk to them, and in fact, in this article I read in the Daily Beast, they talked to forensic consultant Carl Weil.
He said if it's not robbery as a motive, but just somebody who wants to assault, rape, murder someone.
It's really common for someone to just leave all the shit there.
Yeah, that happens all the time. Yeah, it's like, sure, some of them take a trophy, but that's a certain type of killer, and it's like...
Well, and who's to say they didn't? They had other shit with them, I'm sure.
Yeah, I mean, it would make sense because it was this huge search, huge investigation happening.
Whoever did it, whoever possibly did it, probably didn't want to have any of the shit on them.
With them, right. So they just put it in the backpack and dumped it in the woods again.
Because that woman said it wasn't there before.
It wasn't there. So they could have had it.
And they just put it all back and put it back.
Who knows if they had it and deleted that photo.
It's just really incriminating that the woman said it wasn't there.
Yeah. And that one photo missing maybe was an incriminating photo and they got rid of it.
Yeah. Before they left it in the woods again.
Yeah. Hate that, hate that so much. And again, the backpack was just nylon, like a nylon inexpensive hiking backpack. stayed perfect condition in the same conditions that kept this backpack perfectly fine bleached totally dry And kept all the electronics in it perfectly safe, which makes no sense.
Yeah. Weeks in a river and you're telling me those electronics aren't waterlogged?
No, yeah, that makes no sense. In the same conditions, like legitimately reduced Lisanne and Chris's entire bodies and skeletons to like rubble.
That doesn't make any sense. A nylon backpack was held through that and their bodies couldn't?
Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. And then one last interesting thing is the indigenous Ngobi people. actually still speak of this case.
And they have a song. That they sing. That's called Someone Did Evil to Them on the Trail.
Bye. Nope. I just got full body chills. Yes.
And they say that they still talk about the fact that there is a killer that tried to hide their bones in the forest.
I'm so fucking spooked. And obviously these are like, you know, like legends now and all that, but they talk about it.
I don't like that. So I don't have like a concrete theory on what I think happened.
I mean, it's hard. Can I look at the accident theory and say absolutely that could have happened?
Yeah. But there's a lot of loose ends to that too.
Yeah. And then I can look at the fact that there's someone else involved here.
And yeah, it makes sense. I feel like it points more toward that.
But there's also loose ends in that too.
So it's like, because you can also explain away like, you know.
You can say, again, that the pin being entered wrong was Lisanne just trying to call for help on her phone and didn't have her pin.
Right. You can sit there and say, you know, Chris got really hurt, which is obvious in one of the photos.
She got hurt in the head. And, I mean, maybe she didn't last.
Maybe she died, you know, within a day or something like that.
And then Lisanne had to go out on her own.
Right. she's not gonna last that long by herself she doesn't have any food she doesn't she barely has water but also why would they have made a 12-hour journey if they didn't have food or water there's just so many weird things that you're just like you think you can explain most of it and then something like that comes and you're like That doesn't make sense.
And the bleached bones. What the fuck is that?
The deleted photo is really fucking scary.
That doesn't make sense. And it's like, I don't know.
It just doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense.
I hate that you did this to me. So there's still no answers, but...
I mean, that leaked police report that says it's a homicide is really all I need to really hone in on the fact that this was not an accident, but...
We'd love to hear what you guys think about it.
I don't like this one. And I'll be posting some photos for you guys to see so you can examine all the craziness.
And yeah, that is the mystery of the missing Panama girls.
Thanks so much. I mean, don't hike. you don't have to tell me that obviously it's not their fault by any stretch of the imagination but like just you know Just don't do it.
Just don't hike. It's not worth it, guys.
We've covered like three hiking cases. We have.
And it's not worth it. None of them have been worth it.
No. I mean, that clouded forest sounds rad, but, like, not that rad.
Super cool, but, like, you can Google pictures while you're on the treadmill at... climbing pace.
There you go. You're welcome. Smart. Smart.
I like it. So that was Elena's Mini Morbid.
And we're going to hopefully be recording another Patreon bonus episode very shortly.
And I'll be letting you guys know what next week's full-length Morbid episode will be.
Yeah! And other than that, I think in the meantime, you can follow us on Instagram.
At Morbid Podcast. You can send us a Gmail.
Morbidpodcast at gmail.com. Tweet us. A morbid podcast.
Join the Facebook group. Morbid colon a true crime podcast.
Please go check out our awesome website designed by my. lovely co-host app yeah morbidpodcast.com we hope you keep listening but before you do that If you feel so inclined, join our Patreon.
Oh, duh. I forgot to beg you guys for money.
You did. Shit. Patreon.com slash morbid podcast.
In the meantime, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you... keep it weird. But not so weird that you travel to Panama and decide to take a 12-hour journey into the indigenous forest and get eaten by a jaguar, except not because it was totally a homicide in I'm scared now.
Bye. Don't do it. Bye. Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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