Warning this episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing. In April of 2014, Dutch friends Lisanne Freund and Chris Kramers, both in their early 20s, embarked on an adventure of a lifetime, a trip to Panama. Their itinerary was packed and included Spanish classes, exploration and volunteering in the mountainous region near the Baru volcano. On April 1st, they set out for a day hike along the Alpine East, a trail in the cloud forest.
Tragically, Chris and Lisanne never returned. While some remains were eventually discovered, the circumstances surrounding their disappearance remain largely unknown, giving rise to numerous questions and speculation. A particularly strange element of the case involves hunting photographs taken from friends camera on the night they vanished. Photographs that once you see them, you won't soon forget. This is a study of strange. Welcome back to the show.
I'm your host, Michael May. Now, while I try to cover stories that are less and just just less well known study of strange. Every now and then, I do cover a story that is more popular, that is covered a lot, and this is one of those. But it's an intriguing case. There are a lot of strange elements, and there's also a lot of misconceptions that I try to clear up at the end.
Chris Kramers and Lisanne Freund were two friends from the Netherlands, and they embarked on what was supposed to be a life changing adventure in Panama in 2014. Chris was outgoing and creative and reserved and organized. Initially, they were going to go to Costa Rica. That was the that was the goal. But after months of planning, they settled on Panama where they arrived on March 15th. They were not planning to be like your normal lazy tourist.
Like I would be drinking on the beach and eating a lot of food. They were going to be busy. They were planning to volunteer. They took a Spanish language class and they wanted to explore local cultures. On the first part of their trip. They made their way to the town of Bocas del Toro, which is where they took Spanish language classes for a number of weeks, and they enjoyed the tropical scenery. On March 29th, 2014, Chris and Lisanne traveled to the highland town of Paquette De Luca.
It is amazingly picturesque and the primary industry is agriculture, where some of the world's finest coffee is grown, and it's here that they arrange to stay with a local family and were set to begin a volunteer program helping children at a local daycare for about a month. Both were very excited. Part of this trip was a graduation gift to Lisanne, and though both women were different, they were trusted friends and they seemed to have traveled well as a team.
And I say that because we have a journal that was found. So we know a lot about the day to day activity and what was going on. On April 1st, 2014, just days after arriving in Bogota, the pair decided to hike The Pianist a trail, a popular route used by a lot of tourists. It winds up through the lush cloud forest and is about 4 to 5km. One way it leads to a Continental Divide lookout point, but beyond that summit, the terrain becomes remote and challenging.
They left their host family home mid-morning. The plan was to return late that afternoon. Photos recovered later show that Chris and Lisanne were smiling and having a good time at the summit around the early afternoon, indicating that they were on schedule. But after that, something went terribly wrong. At 4:39 p.m., we have the first sign of distress. There was a desperate call to 1 to 2. The international emergency number.
12 minutes later, there was another emergency call from Lisbon's phone to 911, the local emergency number. Neither call was able to connect on top of that. People didn't actually know that Lisanne and Chris went on this hike. Some witnesses saw them having lunch in town before the hike, but apparently even the host family didn't know what their plan was. So that night when they didn't return home, the host family, they were concerned, but no formal alert was raised.
I mean, these are two young women. They're having fun. They're on vacation. Maybe they met friends and went out late. But both women had arranged to text their families every day. And April 1st, those texts stopped. April 2nd. Chris and Lisanne had scheduled a meeting with a local guide for a private tour of the surrounding area. This man, his name is Feliciano Gonzalez and he showed up to meet them. But Lisanne and Chris were not there.
And this is when word started to spread that something might have gone wrong, that these two women are likely in need of help. So residents, tour guides and more started an informal search. If you've come across this story before, you know that their phones were working for a while, not getting signal, but they had battery power, and we know that both women attempted several calls to emergency services after that first night before 4 a.m. on April 4th.
Listen, Samsung Galaxy battery died from that point forward. Only Chris's iPhone four remained usable, but strangely, it was never again used to actually dial emergency numbers after April 2nd. Instead, the iPhone was powered on intermittently during the following days, and investigators later noted that between April 5th and April 11th, the iPhone was turned on multiple times, but the Pin code was either not entered or was entered incorrectly. This can mean a few things.
Likely it was being turned on periodically to preserve battery power and check signal. And it could also mean that something happened to Chris. She could have died or been incapacitated in some way. And Lisanne had Chris's phone, but not the passcode to actually use it. But for the people searching and the rest of the world, there was silence. For weeks, search teams scoured the dense jungle with helicopters, dogs, trackers, but there was no trace of the women.
Families traveled in from Europe to help. The Dutch government sent additional resources, but nothing was found. It seemed that Chris and Lisanne had vanished into thin air until June 14th. So almost two months later, when a local woman from an indigenous community found lesbians backpack near a riverbank miles from the trail, the contents were surprisingly intact. It included sunglasses, cash bras, both their phones and, crucially, a digital camera on that camera. Haunting images emerged.
Happy, wonderful pictures from the first part of their trip. Having food on vacation. Meeting new friends. And then the day of the hike. Cheerful selfies from that trail, followed by a chilling series of 90 photographs taken deep in the pitch black jungle. What were these pictures trying to show? Why were they taken? These are some of the biggest questions about this mystery.
Soon after the backpack was found, shorts were found on a rock, and then soon scattered human remains surfaced along the same river system. DNA confirmed the worst. Chris and Lisanne had perished. The authorities formally ruled the deaths an accident, theorizing the women became disoriented, lost and injured, unable to escape the jungle. But what really happened out there in the jungle? There are so many theories that all range from some form of a tragic accident to foul play. And why foul play?
Because there are some strange anomalies. A lot of the more outlandish theories come down to the photos. These night photos, as they came to be called, are eerie and puzzling. Most of them are shots of indistinct darkness with the flash turned on. It's very difficult to describe these in an audio format. I'll provide links to them. You can easily find them online, but I keep using the word haunting and that is because they are very haunting.
One image shows a row of rocks on a ledge with a sort of plastic bags or candy wrappers on top. Another shows what looks to be a twig with parts of a red plastic bag tied onto it. Another is the back of a person's head, believed to be Chris's, with what some interpret as blood in the hair. Another photo appears to be a part of a backpack strap and a mirror or reflective object spread out on a rock.
And the meaning of these photos remains contested and debated, but many people believe they were taken by the women in desperation during the night, possibly to use the flash as a light source, maybe even a signal, or even just to document their surroundings or injuries. In the pitch dark jungle. Though I'll contest. I don't know if it was to take pictures of injuries, because you don't see really anything clear enough to be that.
But what these images do strongly suggest and explain is that at least one of the women was alive trying to use the camera for help. The camera also revealed another mystery. One photo from the sequence was missing. Photo number 509, which came right after their last daytime photo and right before the night series started, this photo had been deleted, but according to tech experts, deleting a photo on that model off camera leaves a recoverable ghost image.
But investigators could never recover it, implying that it may have been deleted via a computer at some point. Or at least that's the conspiracy. So now that you have the the bulk of the important details of this case, let me clear up some misconceptions. These are not in order by any means. First, Chris and Lisanne were not experienced adventurers. Some accounts paint them to be very experienced, and they worked to.
People have reported and discussed the remains that were found, claiming that these bones were dispersed unnaturally, meaning someone or something scattered. The remains on purpose. However, investigators and other experts say that they were naturally dispersed by the river currents and the wildlife. It all fits into that. Third, the photo of the the back of what is likely Chris's head. The photo that looks like it has blood has been highly altered. Maybe not in a malicious fashion.
It's people trying to get more data from the photos so they change. You know, the contrast in the and the color and and all of those things. Trying to see more in the photo. And when you do that enough, it made part of the head look like there could have been blood. But if you see the actual photo, there's no blood on that head. That's the way I interpret all the images I've seen. Anyway, if you disagree, please let me know.
Next, the shorts that were found, many reports came out saying that the shorts were found neatly folded on a rock, as if they were deliberately put there. This has actually been debunked solidly by the people that found the shorts. The investigators at first arrived at the scene, and even photographs that were taken when they were found next.
Some of the sans bones had bits of skin on it, where, in contrast, Chris Kramer's bones specifically, such as the fragment of her pelvis and some leg bones, were completely bare and appeared bleached. This has led to speculation that chemicals like lime or other deliberate actions might have been involved. However, forensic analysts have stated that the tropical environment bones exposed to the elements can be naturally bleached by sun and weather in a matter of days.
Next is the famous deleted photo, which leads to a lot of conspiratorial debate that this photo was deleted deliberately after the fact, maybe by the government to cover up something. But just because the camera should keep some data behind after deletion, it doesn't mean you can recover the image. Especially because she kept taking photos. If she had stopped, we would have had a better chance. But the data from that deleted photo could have been overwritten by the new pictures being taken.
Suffice to say, it's no guarantee you can recover that image, so I don't think it means someone purposefully deleted it after the fact. Yet in spite of everything I'm talking about, there are a lot of eerie, unanswered questions. Why the desperate nighttime photos? Understanding the sequence of events with all the strange phone activity, and yes, even the hunting missing image that I don't put a lot of stock into, but others do.
This has led a few to consider foul play, and that includes a lawyer that worked for the Kramer family who argued that these anomalies point to a crime. However, investigators, including the Panamanian prosecutor and the Dutch forensic specialist Guy named doctor Frank van der Goot, concluded that this was almost certainly an accident. The Dutch team even attempted to identify the specific location where the accident might have occurred, and they showed photos to a local person.
A guide, I believe, who knew the area, and he recognized details in the images, and he independently pointed out an area along a river that he believed matched where those photos were taken. This area happened to be the same ravine that Doctor Vanda Goode's forensic analyst had highlighted as a possible accident site. In other words, both the expert team and the local guy converged on a particular location beyond the peonies to summit as the probable scene of a fall.
According to these people, the descent on the far side of the east, a trail has multiple steep drop offs of 30 to 40m and very treacherous slippery slopes. If one or both of the women fell in such a spot, they could have been badly hurt if not killed outright and effectively trapped. The team theorized that perhaps while trying to find a way back, one of the women slipped and fell into this ravine, injuring herself.
The other attempted to help, resulting in both being stuck below without a way to climb back up, which to me fits some of the pictures because some of the pictures look like they're shooting up into the sky along the side of almost like a cliff face, or very steep slope. And the riverbeds in that area led exactly to where the remains were found. Perhaps what's most unsettling about the story of Chris Kramers and Lisanne Freund isn't what we don't know, but what we do.
Two capable young women set out on a day hike and never returned. Swallowed by an indifferent and dangerous wilderness. Thank you so much for listening to a study of strange. That story went by faster than I expected. Not that that's a bad thing, just surprising. I'll add a personal little anecdote.
A couple of years ago, when I was working on another story for the podcast, I was in New England in the woods, and it was I can't remember what story I was doing, but I was taking a video to show how easy it can be to get lost in the woods, even when you're, like on a trail or right next to a trail. And it was surprisingly easy. And I got I was with a bunch of people so I could easily find my way back.
But the trail Chris Kramers and Lisanne Freund were on much more dense, much more off the beaten path than I was on. So it had to be very difficult to find your way if you just got slightly disoriented, if that was even part of what happened to them. But it is a tragic, tragic story, so be careful out there. If you are a hiker. As usual, if you like this content best way to support the show? Make sure you're subscribed. Check out our website at City of strange.com.
Until next time. Thank you and good night.