← Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
131. The Mysterious Disappearance of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2
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- [00:00]
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Narrator
In 2014, Dutch roommates and best friends Lisanne Froon and Kris Kramers arrived in Panama for what was going to be the trip of a lifetime. They'd been planning this trip as a post graduation reward for six months and the plan was to see a new country, learn a new language, volunteer, and of course blow off some steam before returning to school to work on their master's degree, which they were set to do that fall. After they took a two week crash course in Spanish on a Panamanian island, the girls relocated to a small tourist town on the mainland, Boquete, where they were going to be volunteering with young kids. Their first day, they arrived at a daycare center, excited. They were even carrying a few toys that they had brought with them. They but when they arrived, they learned that there had been a miscommunication. They actually weren't set to start for a few more days. So now they had some time to kill and that was not going to be a problem for these girls. They loved exploring new places and Boquete was a travel destination for adventure tourism. There was so much to do there and actually the girls found that just outside the city limits was a jungle full of trails and even an active volcano deep inside. Chris and Lisana decided to take a spontaneous hike on El Pianista, the Pianist that led to the top of the Baru volcano. And so as they were heading back to their host family's house after the volunteer mix up, they ran into a local guide who we'll call Marco, and he offered to lead the women to the trail. He hiked the trail a million times, he said, and he even offered to host them overnight on his property in this remote village deep within the jungle called Alto Romeo. Now, the girls figured that they could hike this trail without any help. It was relatively easy, just an out and back. So they politely declined this offer. And maybe it's because they felt guilty, but they told Marco that they would do a tour of a local strawberry farm the next day with him. And then they went on their way. The next morning, the girls left their host family's house at around 8am At 9am they asked a local innkeeper for directions to the Pianista trailhead, and then they arrived there at around 10am and this trail is well within protected land, but people's properties back right up to it, especially at the beginning of the trail. And as the girls began the hike, they passed by people's homes and outbuildings for their farms. And many of these residents remember seeing these women beginning their trek up the mountain in the direction of the volcano. But none of them remembered seeing them come down. The next day, Marco waited for Chris and Lisana at the strawberry farm for their tour to start. But the two girls never showed up. He got a bad feeling, and he actually had the number of the host family they were staying with, so he decided to give them a call. And their host mother, Mario Lane, went to their bedrooms to check on them. But she found that their beds were still made from the day before. The women definitely did not come home last night. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaylin Moore. I have a really big story that I want to tell you. It's the story of a disappearance, but some people say that there is a monster hidden somewhere inside of it. And as I was poring through the research, the Panamanian authorities statements, the investigation that was done by the Dutch, I kept feeling like I caught glimpses of that monster living in between the lines of their police reports. Like he was only really there if I squinted super hard and read the research twice. It's hard to explain exactly what I mean, but I think you'll see it as we go on in the story. And one thing I do want to add before we get into everything, is that I had heard about this story years ago, and maybe some of you did too. But the reason that I want to tell it today, aside from it being our Dark Summer series, is that recently there was a bombshell Dutch investigation that was released, One that said everything we know about this case is wrong, that everything you heard before actually came from the Panamanian authorities. And that they were lying. So today I want to paint the whole picture for you, and I want you to decide what could have happened to two girls who were doing just a short hike in the Panamanian jungle and never made it home. And just a quick reminder, we do have a bonus episode for July out on Patreon, and this month the community voted on ghost stories and urban legends surrounding Chernobyl. We're talking about the creepy dolls that people keep finding scattered around the Chernobyl exclusion zone, the very haunted hospital there, and so much more. So make sure you're subscribed on Patreon or Apple podcasts to hear that episode. Okay, let's get into it. And as always, listener discretion is advised. Marco, the tour guide, as well as the girl's host mother, and other folks around the community started doing an informal search that day around town, but they weren't able to find any sign of Chris and Lisana. By the end of the day. On April 2, just a little over 24 hours after the two girls began hiking La Pianista, a missing person's report was filed locally and their parents back home in the Netherlands were notified of their disappearance. The next day, April 3, Marco, who had now really taken the lead on the investigation, even though he had only ever had a brief interaction with the girls, got in touch with Cena Pro, a Panamanian federal law enforcement agency. Marco arranged to lead a group of officers up the trail to do a search. But that day, apparently they had barely started doing the hike before Cena Pro officials recalled the back to their local office to prepare for the arrival of a Dutch ambassador that next morning. So Marco decided he was just going to continue the hike alone. Like I said, he was very familiar with this area. He led tours there often, and he owned land that was only accessible by this trail. So he knew that it was a well trod trail that went up to a peak with an elevation of about 66,000ft or 2012 meters. The trail is called Pianista, or Piano Player, because it includes a set of steep steps like a ladder, and sideways they look like the keys of a piano. Because of these steps, the trail is marked as moderate rather than easy, but Marco knew that it actually wasn't that difficult of a hike. It's a very clear trek, it's a well marked trail with no offshoots, a simple out and back, and it didn't really make sense to him that the girls would have gotten lost on it. He reached the peak of the trail and he saw no signs of the girls at all. And that's really when his heart sank, because you're supposed to turn around when you get to the top, but it's not really well marked. And in 2014, a sign was added that read end of trail, no return passage in Spanish. But that sign wasn't there when the girls were doing this hike. On the other side of where this sign is now, the trail was not maintained and it's a lot more treacherous. Actually, some of the locals refer to this area as jungle hell. We're talking knee deep mud, slippery steep terrain, deep ravines and river crossings over rickety bridges. These are trails that only local indigenous tribes use because they're so maze like and confusing to anyone who doesn't live in the jungle and have to use them every day. And Marco knew that if the women didn't return, it was probably because they were lost or maybe injured on this more dangerous side of the trail. And so he continued on, but he still didn't find any trace of them. This episode is brought to you by greenchef. Oh, how we all love summer. The longer days, the sunshine, that frozen fresh start feeling you just feel your best. And for me, that's the perfect time to get back into healthy routines. And that's why I'm so into Green Chef, the number one meal kit for clean eating. You've probably heard about Green Chef before, but what you might not know is that now they have new heat and eat meals. So you can have a delicious wholesome dish on the table in just three minutes. You don't even have to do the prep. The recipes feature fresh organic produce and responsibly sourced proteins, perfect for supporting any wellness goal. 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- [10:20]
Kristen Bell
Hi, I'm Kristen Bell. And if you know my husband, Dax, then you also know he loves shopping for a car. Selling a car, not so much.
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Narrator
We're really doing this, huh?
- [10:28]
Kristen Bell
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- [10:39]
Narrator
Goodbye, Truckee.
- [10:41]
Kristen Bell
Of course, we kept the favorite.
- [10:44]
Narrator
Hello, other Truckee.
- [10:46]
Kristen Bell
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- [10:51]
Narrator
Over the next couple of days, Sinapro searched all the popular hiking trails around the city, which is this massive area covering 621 miles of wilderness. Sniffer dog teams and helicopters combed the whole area. The local indigenous tribes were also notified, and they joined in on the search. Lisana and Chris's family, along with other Dutch investigators, came to Boquete to help search. At this point, local and international media were covering the case, and everyone across the whole country was biting their nails, wondering who would find something first. The Panamanians, the Dutch. And ten days after the women disappeared, they got their answer. About 50 meters off the Pianista trail, a local video blogger that had joined the search team found a plastic bag from a local supermarket with snack wrappers inside. Next to it was a shoe with a long blonde hair attached. Now, both of the girls had long blonde hair, so he immediately delivered these items to Cena Prok. And of course, he also posted a video about his find on YouTube. And initial comments from law enforcement about this find were pretty optimistic. But then something really strange happened. A few days later, the Cenoproch general director told the press that the shoe never existed and the plastic bag had nothing to do with the missing women. This was such a weird backtrack from their initial comments, and people started speculating that maybe the video blogger may have planted this evidence. But much later, it actually came to light that Sinapro had lost track of of the supermarket bag. When it eventually reached the lab for testing, its handling hadn't been properly logged, and it made it impossible to test it for fingerprints accurately. It's not clear what happened to the shoe, but it seems like that was never tested, and we can kind of assume that it was probably lost as well. That was just one of the many, many missteps Cenopro and the local police department made during this initial investigation. The one local actually referred to their search efforts as a total mess. And after searching the wilderness for about 10 days, the authorities seemed completely stumped. The general director actually told the press, quote, we have never lost a single person on this trail, we've always found them. It seemed like the investigation maybe needed new perspective and new energy. So on April 22, about 20 days after Chris and Lisana disappeared, both of those things arrived when public prosecutor Betsaida Petit took over and she took one look at the facts of this case and she made a bombshell statement. She said that she was going to pivot away from search and rescue and focus on a criminal investigation. She believed that something horrible and intentional had happened to these girls. And this shift really marked the beginning of two opposing theories about what happened. One theory was mostly taken by the Panamanian police, and the other theory is mostly taken by the Dutch authorities that launched their own investigation. Either this was a wilderness accident or it was foul play. Now, Petit considered everything from murder to kidnapping to human and even organ trafficking as she re interviewed witnesses and raided properties around Pokete, searching for any evidence she could find. But even though she had this idea that someone may be responsible for the girl's disappearance, she just didn't have any physical evidence that suggested that, that is until June 13, six weeks after their disappearance. On June 13, a sopping wet backpack was found near a river in alto Romeo, a 14 hour hike into the Panamanian jungle. Inside were two bras neatly folded towards the top, two pairs of sunglasses, a water bottle, some cash, and a passport that belonged to Lisanna Fron. It wasn't much to go off of, but at least it proved that the girls had only intended to be gone for part of the day. It was a bit strange though. Police thought that the key to their room wasn't inside of the backpack and that one of the girls passports was missing. But they were also, in a way, a bit relieved because this proved that the girls had been in the area, somehow making it to this treacherous part of the jungle. The searchers rummaged around in the bag a bit more and that's when they found maybe the two single most important pieces of evidence in this entire search, at least up until this point. Inside the bag were two smartphones and a digital camera, because answers about what happened to these two women might be on those devices. Now, I want to go through the contents of the phones and the digital camera with you. And for the phone records, we're relying mostly on a book published last year called Still Lost in Panama by Christian Hardinghouse and Annette Nenner. The authors claimed to have had access to the complete investigation and court files from Panamanian and Dutch authorities. And you know, after pouring over the research, some of what I'm going to read here contradicts some reporting that was done by Panamanian police. But if we can trust the Dutch authors at their word, which I personally think we can, this seems like the most reliable source for the raw phone data. And I do just want to make a note here that this book was originally published in Dutch, so there could be some information that got muddled in translation. On April 1, the day the women started their hike, Chris's phone showed a call to 112, an emergency line in the Netherlands, and that took place at 4:39pm Lisana's phone dials the same number shortly after. It's important to note that there's no cell phone reception on this specific trail or really on any of the trails outside of Boquete. So the phone records only provide a record of the activity on the phones. They do not provide any useful location information. All of these calls were attempted, but none of them were able to connect. The timing of the initial emergency calls was around when it would have started getting dark in the jungle. And when other hikers and searchers recreated what they knew of Lisana and Chris's route, they didn't feel lost. At this point in the hike, they were able to get back to where they started relatively easy. So it's possible that the women left the trail or maybe were unable to get home for some other reason, like if they had been injured or if there was a third party with them preventing them from doing so. There was a 12 minute gap in between the first two emergency calls, and some people feel like that rules out a serious injury or panic, but not the idea that someone else was there. If the women realized they couldn't trust someone they were with, maybe they were making these calls in secret. After the initial emergency calls failed to connect, both phones were powered off at the same time, 5:52pm and they remained off for about 13 hours. No more emergency calls were tried after those initial two, at least not the first day. The next day, both phones attempted the same emergency call at different times in the morning. And then a feature on Chris's PIN protected iPhone was activated which allowed access to more apps without inputting the pin. And then Chris's phone remained off for the rest of the day. Lisana's phone, however, turned on and off a few more times for emergency calls throughout the day. After it was powered on at 4:19pm it stayed on for the next 15 hours, but the only time it was used was to check a weather app in the middle of the night. That night, back in Boquete, a missing persons report was filed for the women. Then the next day, April 3, Lisana's phone was powered off when it reached 1% battery at 7:36am And Chris's phone was turned on to dial emergency numbers a few times that morning. Then it was immediately turned off. At 3:59pm it was powered on again to access the address book contact for their host mother, Mario Lane, but no call was attempted. Now, Chris accessing her host mother's contact without calling it makes the most sense, at least to me, if she was maybe showing that number to someone else. But as far as we know, the host mother's phone records were never cross referenced to see if someone did contact her around the same time that her contact was accessed in the phone. Now, at the same time that all of that is happening, Marco said he was searching the forest for the women on his own. After the Sinaproc officials were summoned to prepare for the Dutch ambassador arriving the following day. On April 4, Lisana's phone fully ran out of battery after being turned on at 4:50pm it's never recharged. Chris's phone turns on a few times, but there's no activity after this point. Phone activity really slows down. Chris's phone turns on a few more times for just a few seconds. The correct PIN was entered for the last time on April 5th. After that, it's turned on several more times. But according to the book Still Lost in Panama, no PIN is ever entered. Though I will say the Daily Beast reported that there were 77 attempts with an incorrect PIN. But I do think that they're mistaken. Remember, Chris turned on a setting where certain apps could be used without a pin. And here is what I find really strange about this part. So according to digital forensic analysts, Chris's phone was powered on and off so quickly she could not have checked for signal. At best, she got a glance at the home screen that displayed the date and time. And Chris's phone was powered on for the last time on on April 11. After four days without any phone activity and 10 days since they disappeared, and a few hours after the phone turned off for the last time, the video blogger came upon the plastic bag and shoe. But because we don't have any location data from Chris's phone, we don't know how close it was to wherever those items were found. I want to make a note here that the activity on the phone from April 11 is a little bit confusing. According to Still Lost in Panama, digital forensic analysts see that quote, 11 new log files and system files were created between 10:51am and 11:56am, and the dates and times of log files from April 6th are also manipulated during this time. All of this was done without entering a pin, so we really can't be sure that it was the girls doing this. I don't have much more information on these files other than that it's not really clear what application activity was going on to change these files or why the digital analysts couldn't harvest more information on this. But according to the Lost in Panama authors, this log file activity could have only occurred two ways. One, a user could have been using a function that Chris allowed to be accessed without a pin, which included the photo app, the flashlight, her timer, and playing music downloaded on the phone. Another option is that the phone was being manipulated via external hardware like a jailbreak, but we don't know who would have been doing that. And after this very confusing iPhone activity, the phone was powered off and it was not turned back on until it was in the hands of people. Panamanian authorities. I imagine Cena Pro was at a loss after looking at the phone. Were the girls in danger? Were they hurt? If they were lost and alone in the jungle, it's a little hard to buy that they kept their phones off all night. The first night, Chris in particular had a decent amount of battery. And if they were in dire trouble, wouldn't they have tried to call emergency services or their host mother more? It didn't seem like saving phone battery was a huge priority because, remember, Lisana kept her phone on for 15 hours, all of which was using a useless WI fi signal, and that leached a significant amount of her battery power. But it brings up the question, were they trying to hide the phone from someone they were with? Maybe someone they ran into who had bad intentions? Well, investigators hoped that the digital camera they found would help answer some of these questions. The camera contained images from the entire trip, but only the photos from the date of disappearance onward have been made public. Those can be broken into two day photos taken on the trail, April 1, the day the women disappeared, and night photos taken in the very early morning hours of April 8, a week after they had disappeared. There's about a dozen day photos, and at first glance they look like typical tourist hiking photos. Most of them are of Chris's back as she is hiking ahead of Lisana on the trail. There's a few selfies of both women, one towards the start of the trail and a few from the peak. They move quickly through the selfies at the top taking eight photos in less than two minutes, all in slightly different locations. In the selfies, the women make a cheesy, excited thumbs up gesture. They seem to be having a really good time. And there's nothing necessarily concerning about these day photos until you get to the last few. The final day photos confirm that the women did indeed continue past the end of the trail, the and down the more treacherous side of the mountain, which at this point authorities did figure These photos had two major contradictions from the witness statements about April 1st first, the timestamps on the photos didn't line up with the timeline witnesses presented to the police. According to the camera, the women were on the trail roughly two hours earlier than witnesses claimed. And there's no reason to think that the timestamp on the camera was inaccurate. Also, the clothes the women had on in the photos didn't align with witness descriptions. Could it have been that the witnesses saw other white blonde haired travelers that day and confused them for Chris and Lisanna? The last daytime photo from April 1 shows Chris crossing a stream bed. And there's something about her that doesn't seem quite right. She's grimacing at the camera and some people say she looks scared. That photo is numbered within the digital camera as 508. And the next photo, which is the first in the night series shot on early April 8, is numbered 510. The photo numbered 509 is missing, and it's the photo that bridges Chris looking scared. And the photos that were taken a week later after the women had traveled miles into the jungle. Now, forensic experts searched for signs of any data related to this missing photo, and they found that its disappearance was not consistent with the photo being deleted manually on the camera or with some kind of system malfunction. Even using a data recovery program, no traces of this photo could be found. The only way for that to happen would have been for someone to manually remove the data after the fact using outside hardware or software. Speculation on this is really all over the place, and there's not really any way to determine when exactly this happened, but I will get to some theories as to how this happened. But for now, let's take a look at the night photos. All 90ish photos taken on April 8 were taken within just a few feet of each other in a steep jungle. Some photos were taken just a few seconds apart, probably as quickly as possible, and others have a gap of 15 minutes or more between them. All of the photos were taken with the flash on, and the majority showed the dark night sky. Raindrops and whatever vegetation was within reach of the flash. Weather records show that in the early morning hours of April 8th there was rain. So this does confirm that the camera's date and time functions were accurate. And the vegetation definitely confirms that the photos were taken on the treacherous side of the Pianista Trail. Based on the landmarks, guides in Boquete think that the women were on the bank of a strong tributary along the same river where the backpack was eventually found. And some of the moss around where the photos are taken is matted down and that suggests that there was foot traffic in the area, like the women were on or near a trail. There's a few other indicators of man made structures in the photos, but they're really, really hard to see because the photos are so poorly lit. There's a few lines that seem to be cables making up a monkey bridge crossing a river in the back of some of the photos. And one photo shows a few sticks with pieces of brightly colored plastic tied to them on a large flat boulder. And experts speculate that this was the women's attempt to create a marker for themselves or for rescuers. They, they also used toilet paper to spell out something we can't really read. Maybe it was an arrow or sos. And they also put something reflective near the letters to hopefully catch the eye of an aerial rescuer. The only photo of the 90 plus photos taken at night that's of the girls is a close up of tangled light blonde hair that's believed to be Chris's. Some people think that the photographer meant to record perhaps an injury, but other people believe that Chris may have been photographed postmortem. She seems to be laying down in this photo. And honestly, the picture is really just hair. It's nothing else around it. And it's impossible to say definitively that is even Chris. But there is one thing that I do find really bizarre about this picture. It doesn't look like the subject of this photo spent days living in the rough rainy jungle. The hare, whoever's it is, it's a little messy, but it's clean and it's very dry. When you see all of these pictures in order, they are incredibly haunting. But they don't hold any obvious answers as to what happened to the girls. There's no mysterious third person in any of the photos, at least not, not that I saw or that any investigator saw. So authorities were left to try and guess why they had been taken. And I'll add here too that when Dutch authorities got the camera, they noticed that some of the photos had been altered, but Panamanian authorities said it was just them trying to brighten some of the photos. So the simplest explanation anyone could come up with was that the women weren't paying attention to what they were shooting necessarily. They were just using the flash to get the attention of nearby rescuers. Maybe they were trying to illuminate the pitch dark jungle or they were trying to scare off a predator. Though there's no predators found in any of the photos. And wouldn't you have tried to flash right into its eyes? But forensic photography analysts and wilderness survival experts think that these photos were taken a bit more intentionally. When looking at the photos in chronological order, they create a 360 degree view of a location. It seems like they could have been meant to record a specific spot. And because Chris appears to be incapacitated in the photo, that's maybe of her hair, some people wonder if Lisana took the photos in an attempt to record the location of her injured or dead friend. But it still didn't answer the question for authorities of where, where were the girls now? And if these photos did hold any clues, did it mean that one of them, maybe Chris, had passed away? Well, six weeks after the discovery of the phones and the camera, authorities got their answer.
- [32:49]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [33:18]
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Ryan Reynolds
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- [34:19]
Narrator
Just when the searchers thought they would never discover another trace of the girls, a few members from a local indigenous tribe contacted Marco, who then contacted the police. They had found something. The exact location of the find wasn't recorded, but it was near the riverbank of the Rio Culebra that runs through the jungle near Alto Romeo, the same river that the backpack was found near. There, they found 33 bone fragments and a woman's shoe that still had a foot fully intact inside of it. The foot would later be confirmed as Lisana's, and they also found a pair of jean shorts that belonged to Chris. Although officials confirmed that the remains did belong to Chris and Lisana, they didn't provide many answers about what happened to them. The remains didn't hold many clues. Authorities said the only really definitive information was that Lisana's foot was broken sometime while she was alive. But it's not clear if it was a stress fracture from lots of walking or a sudden injury from a fall. From there, the results just got more and more confusing. The remains were in various states of decomposition. A fragment of Chris's rib was bleached by the sun, which made it seem like her body had decayed long before Lisanna's, which still had some skin attached to the bones. Experts didn't agree on whether the remains showed signs of natural decomposition or human intervention. And reports differed on whether the bones showed signs of animal activity. But here is what we learn from this new Dutch book that came out that looked at all of the evidence still lost in Panama. They say that we could have learned a lot more from these remains, but the Panamanian authorities severely mishandled them, perhaps intentionally. First, the authorities never took samples of the soil on and near the remains. And that could have provided some insight if the remains were ever moved. Also, and I could not believe what I was reading when I saw this. There were 30 unidentified fingerprints found on the girl's back backpack. Panamanian authorities never made print logs. So we will never know who these prints belonged to. I mean, think about your backpack. Have 30 separate people touched it. I mean, it does feel like a lot of people, and it would be nice to have some confirmation on who they were. After all of the digital evidence was processed, the Panamanians and the Dutch were, were really split on how to proceed with the investigation. Dutch investigators and the women's families remained convinced that the women were victims of crime. Why was their call log so weird? Why were there so many fingerprints on their bag? And one thing that Chris's dad really could not make sense of was why the girls had removed their bras and folded them neatly inside of their backpack. Who does that while hiking? But at the end of August, a little over a month after the backpack was discovered, the prosecutor who was now taking lead on the investigation, Pitti, recommended closing the case. She said that she had come to a conclusion on what had happened. The girls, she said, had fallen off of a monkey bridge into the river where their remains were found. What? No. The families did not buy this theory for a single second, and they submitted legal requests for her to reconsider. But Petit refused. Instead, she presented Lisana's parents with their daughter's remains on September 24, which would have been her 23rd birthday. Unfortunately for the girl's parents, they were never really given any more information on what happened to their daughters other than the monkey bridge theory. So what I want to do here is walk through just a few other theories that have arisen over time, starting with the foul play theory. In general, there's an argument that the evidence and how it was uncovered indicates some kind of COVID up. The Panamanian investigation might have just been sloppy, but there are areas where some people think it crossed the line into intentional misdirection and deceit. Independent investigators and journalists, including the authors of Still Lost in Panama, uncovered multiple leads that the Panamanian authorities failed to pursue, including several sightings of a red pickup truck on the Pianista trail the day the women disappeared. We don't know who was driving that car or what they were doing, and honestly, we probably never will. But these were locals that were asked, and they knew the area really well. And to them, this pickup truck seemed out of place that day. And then there is the mishandling or complete disregard for almost all of the important physical evidence, from the plastic bag to the shoe to Lisana's backpack. None of those items were treated with proper chain of evidence protocol, making it impossible to test them for any possible suspect fingerprints or DNA. The good condition of the items in the backpack after they were supposedly knocked around in a river has also raised the suspicion that it was maybe planted there. And then there's the manipulation of the digital evidence. Remember, there was a revision of the phone activity on April 6. There was some manipulation of some of the photos, and also the missing photo, numbered 509. This could have been done by a savvy perpetrator that was trying to hide their tracks. But it also begs the question why this person would bother when they could have simply gotten rid of this evidence, like just thrown the camera into the river. So the other possibility is that someone inside the Panamanian government or law enforcement decided to alter this evidence themselves. And that specifically begs the question, was there something in photo 509 that the Panamanian authorities did not want anyone to see? I mean, if it was just one piece of digital evidence that was manipulated, maybe it was a mistake. But the fact that there's multiple pieces of digital evidence is hard to ignore. And maybe it's important to note here that tourism in Panama accounts for almost 20% of its GDP. Boquete's entire economy depends on adventure tourism, and murdered tourists would have been really bad for business. So a narrative about two women who didn't follow safety protocol and decided to hike the trail alone is a much better narrative for the tourism economy, rather than two girls were murdered on the trail. And so some people argue that the authorities would have really strong motivations to cover up any criminal activity that would be dangerous to tourists. But what exactly would they have been trying to cover up? Now, there's some pretty wild theories out there that involve drug cartels, organ trafficking, human trafficking, and maybe it sounds a little bit out there, but the locals did say that they know the Pianista trail and other remote trails around Boquete are secretly used to transport illegal substances, though they didn't really expand on what those substances are. I'm sure for their own protection. If Chris and Lisanna maybe encountered something like that on the backside of the trail, their lives could have been in serious danger. And this is something that I found really upsetting, but also really telling about this story. One forensic pathologist who handled the women's remains for the Panamanian investigation claimed that the bones did look like they had gone through the process of organ harvesting. And he, of all people, would know, because earlier in his career, he actually helped close down illegal clinics who would drain bodies, remove their organs, and then dismember the remaining tissue completely so that they would never be fully recovered. And this investigator brought up the fact that less than 2% of both women's bodies were ever recovered, which is kind of a signature move in organ harvesting in the area. Now, there's also the theory under the foul play umbrella that says that this wasn't a criminal organization, but it was just one singular bad actor. Now, there are many suspects, but the most popular is one of the Local guides who was involved in searching for the women. Marco. Now, other locals who suspected Marco said that he did have a reputation for flirting with young tourists and was even seen bathing alongside them in the hot springs. And as the rumor goes, Marco offered to guide Chris and Lisana up the Pianista Trail all the way to his property in Alto Romero. And the women declined his offer. So Marco followed the women up the trail before assaulting them and forcing them out to his property in Alto Romero, which is where their backpack and their remains were found. And the next day, people say that Marco lied about bringing Sinaproc officials onto the search, that really he spent hours on the trail alone, just covering up his tracks. And later, he murdered Chris and Lisana and dismembered their bodies. When Marco got worried that the investigation was getting too close to him, he altered the evidence on the phones and the camera, and he planted the backpack. And then he also planted the remains, too, and led the search parties that eventually found them. And. And that way, he would never really be a suspect. Now, there's not really any physical evidence to support this rumor. No witnesses saw Marco on the trail the day the women disappeared. And Marco would later actually go on to claim that he never even met the women, that them turning down his offer was just a rumor, and that the Strawberry Farm tour was arranged through an intermediary. Which is a little bit of a strange pivot, I'll say, especially when you think about how much effort he put into finding two girls he apparently had never even met. But one thing that does strike me as a little odd is that all of the Cena Pro officials Marco rounded up himself for a search, had to suddenly abandon the effort to prepare for the arrival of that Dutch ambassador. The account actually is not backed up by Cena Pro, and it's honestly a little strange, because why would the Dutch ambassador show up after the women had just been missing less than 24 hours? It doesn't really check out, and it probably didn't happen that way. Now, Marco, to this day, denies all of these accusations. He says that he was among the most experienced and reliable guides in Boquete, and that his residence in Alto Romero made him the best candidate to lead the searches for the remains in that area. And for what it's worth, the Dutch authors of Lost in Panama unequivocally believe that Marco is innocent. But a little editor's note here, they also did need his support to write their book, because a lot of the book is written from Marco's perspective, and he is A key witness to them. So take it with a grain of salt. Although the evidence holds plenty of confusing indicators of a cover up, and it leaves a lot of space for speculation about foul play, the majority of the experts who look at the evidence arrive at the same conclusions that the Panamanian investigators came to, that Chris and Lisanna died after getting lost in the wilderness and suffering a fatal accident, likely a fall into a river. I mean, after all, when they were searching the area around that monkey bridge where they believed the girls would have fallen, they did find the bones of other people. It seemed like it was an incredibly dangerous bridge that other people had also died from falling off of. There are many variations of what could have happened, but in a wilderness accident scenario, their final few days could have played out something like this. At least that's what some of the experts say. On the first day, the girls strayed off of the trail for some reason. Although the trail itself was treacherous, it seems like it's pretty hard to get lost on, and it's also pretty well trafficked. If the women disappeared and no one saw them, they must have left the trail. Maybe they saw something that scared them or they just wanted to keep going. And once they were off the trail, this theory says that they got lost and that's when they attempted the emergency calls. A survivalist expert suspects that without a trail, they might have tried following a river. This can sometimes be a good strategy, but it was the wrong one in this jungle. And they probably ended up trapped in the heavy vegetation along the river, unable to move up the steep terrain to a higher elevation. Then they would have probably been forced to drink water from the river, which probably meant that they consumed microorganisms that made them sick. And that, combined with the lack of food, would have left the them physically and mentally exhausted in a matter of hours. From that point on, it would have been pretty hard to make good decisions. But even still, based on their phone activity, they did survive for several days. The night the photos were taken, it was raining heavily for the first time, and that could have caused a flash flood, surprising the women in the middle of the night. They might have attempted a dangerous river crossing on a monkey bridge and Chris could have fallen off. Lisanna, in an effort to record Chris's location, took all of those photos. Lisanna could have left Chris's shorts on the riverbank as another marker, and then she continued on her own, taking Chris's phone with her. Now, people who know the area note that that specific monkey bridge is part of the Pianista trail. Even though the crossing might have killed Chris, it meant that that the women managed to find the trail again. Lisana probably then continued on the trail as best she could. But she was weak, and she was traumatized from leaving her friend behind. And she took all of those photos to remember where she had left her. When she came to another bridge crossing, she maybe couldn't make it. Possibly she fell, breaking her foot and just couldn't go any further. She then turned on Chris's phone one last time, but it still didn't have a signal. And she eventually died in the river, and her remains got mixed up with her friends as they floated down from upstream. But there's a lot of people who just don't believe this is the way it happened. One forensic pathologist who worked on the early search said that bones that fall into turbulent water tend to have breaks in certain places, like the pelvis. And while there weren't many of the girl's bones left, there was a section of pelvis found that didn't have the breaks that the pathologists said they would have. They said this was not the pelvis of someone who fell into the river. They also mention that it was somewhat of a miracle that any of the girl's remains were found, just because of how chaotic and turbulent the jungle can be. So the idea of that one of the girls died upstream from the other, and their remains flowed downstream and all mixed together is nearly impossible. Experts say that's just not how the river works. It would have carried all of the remains away, and there's basically no way that all of the remains would have mixed together downstream. So to them, it seems like the girls must have died in the same location, which, to these experts, at least begs the question, did the girls die at the hand of someone else? We will most likely never have a definitive answer on what happened to these girls who were just taking a vacation of a lifetime. The accident theory is the official cause of death. Now, though, I must say, something about that just doesn't sit right with me. I felt like when I was going through the research on this case, that I kept catching glimpses of a monster in the jungle, one that almost existed in between the lines of the text I was reading. Every time a call was placed, I wondered if it was done in secret. And I felt like maybe this monster was somewhere out of sight. When Chris grimaced at the camera, maybe they were somewhere that she could see them, but I just couldn't. And maybe, just maybe, this monster's fingerprints are all over their backpack. But all other physical evidence of this monster seems to have been washed away in the volatile Panamanian jungle. But what do you guys think? Please, I love hearing your breakdowns of these cases. You guys put stuff together in interesting ways that I don't always think of. And I know we have a lot of experts in different fields that listen to this show and I just love hearing your analysis. But for now, that is all I have for you. In this week's edition of Dark Summer here at Heart Starts Pounding. Next week we are going to be heading down a slightly lighter and yet still very terrifying path of abandoned amusement parks. The very dark stories of why these parks became abandoned and the ghostly stories of what goes on there now, you're not going to want to miss it. And until then, stay curious. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaylin Moore. Heartstarts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Additional research and writing by Hannah McIntosh. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe have a heart pounding story or a case request. Check out heartstartspounding. Com.