Girls disappear on dog walk into jungle – then chilling photos are discovered on camera – Daily Star
Two young Dutch students died while hiking in dense South American jungle – but someone appears to have used their camera to take a chilling photo after they died
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Mystery still surrounds the fate of two young women who disappeared while hiking in the jungles of Panama.
Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon were last seen alive on April Fools’ Day, 2014. Months later, officials found their bleached bones, and a set of disturbing photos.
Dutch students Kris and Lisanne were travelling in South America on a gap year-type tip, staying in hostels across the region. On April 1, they left the place where they were staying in the small mountain town of Boquete, and took the owner’s dog on a long walk to the summit of the the Baru volcano.
“I don't think they were taking this hike particularly seriously,” explained podcaster Mr Ballen. “It was traditionally a guided hike, so you went and did this with a local who could make sure you didn't leave the path or fall off a cliff.”
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But the pair set off unaccompanied, with just basic supplies and a camera in a backpack. Later that night, the dog returned to the hostel but the girls were nowhere to be seen.
The host family searched the area around their home but decided to wait until morning to alert the authorities. Months went by with no sign of the girls, and despite a substantial reward offered by the girls’ parents, there was no sign of them.
It was nearly three months later that a local woman found a backpack in a rice paddy some five miles from the volcano. The woman said that she worked in those fields regularly, but hadn’t seen the distinctive backpack before.
“The backpack probably had not been sitting there for very long,” said Mr Ballen. “It had been placed there within the previous couple of days.” Inside were two pairs of sunglasses, $83 in cash, Lisanne Froon’s passport, a water bottle, and two bras.
“Everything inside the backpack was very neatly placed: it looked like someone had very intentionally put everything in the bag, zipped it up neatly put it down by the riverside to be found,” Mr Ballen said. "It didn’t look like a backpack that had been left out in the jungle for 10 weeks.
Also inside the bag was a digital camera belonging to one of the girls, which featured a series of disturbing photos. After some normal, touristy snaps, several images captured in the early hours of April 8 showed the girls’ belongings scattered over the ground and what appeared to be Kris Kremers, lying face down and bleeding from a wound on her forehead.
Some of the other pictures – apparently taken in the dead of night – showed what appeared to be various items from the girls' backpack that had been removed and spread over nearby rocks.
Even more strangely the last picture taken appeared to have been completely deleted. Normally, with digital cameras, deleted photos stay on the device until the memory space is needed again, and can be easily retrieved by forensic specialists.
"But when they went to do that with this deleted image," Mr Ballen says, "it was wiped for good. Someone had managed to professionally wipe one picture… the last picture on the camera roll."
The authorities widened their search area to take in the area where the backpack was found, and they soon found some of the girls’ clothes neatly folded by the side of a river.
But it was another two months before their remains were found. Searchers found a pelvic bone and a foot, still inside a boot. Soon after, further remains were found. DNA profiling confirmed that these body parts belonged to the girls, but there was a chilling detail. Mr Ballen explains: “DNA also showed that mixed in with some of the bone fragments and pieces of remains that were found were at least three other people's remains.” Five people had died at that spot.
Analysis of the two girls’ phones, found in the backpack, showed that they had tried to contact the emergency services over 70 times as far back as April 6, but none of the calls got through.
A pathologist determined that there was no evidence of a wild animal attack, and added that Kris Kremers’ bones were perfectly clean – as if they had been bleached. Investigators also note start there had been several unsuccessful attempts to log into Kris’s phone, apparently by someone who didn’t know the PIN.
Police questioned a number locals and tour guides, as well as several other hikers who had been in the area at the time, but were never able to establish who might have been involve din the girls’ deaths, or even how Kris and Lisanne had died.
The only person with the answer to this disturbing mystery is whoever took that last eerie photo of Kris Kremers lying injured, and possibly already dead, on the jungle floor.
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