5 of 7: Cinco Muertos (Five Dead)

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This is part five. of an on-the-ground investigation into the mysterious deaths of Chris Kramers and the San Frone, two young women who died in the jungle of Panama in 2014. What happened to Chris and the San? Was it a hiking accident? a double murder, or something else altogether. I'm Mariana Atencio. In this series, I travel to the small town of Boquete with Jeremy Kreit from The Daily Beast to reinvestigate this case eight years later.

Since we landed in Boquete, Jeremy and I have spent a lot of time filling in the backstory of everything that's known about Chris and Lisanne. How and where they went missing. How the search for them unfolded. What we found out from their camera, their phones, their bones. But now we're at a critical point in our investigation. We've just secured a meet-up with Feliciano Gonzalez.

the enigmatic guide who first reported Chris and Lisanne missing. And it feels like we're on the precipice of breaking new ground here. I want to go undercover with Jackie and Caroline, the two German tourists we met. while hiking the Pianista Trail, where Chris and the Sandis appeared, while all pose as friends seeking a tour guide to take us into the cloud forest.

And then we'll bring up Chris in the sand and see how Feliciano reacts. It's a great plan. So the next step is to call Jackie and Caroline. But when I reach for my phone to call them and ask for their help...

I see a message on my screen. Sorry, I just got like a creepy email. From who? Can we open it? It looks like spam, almost. It's from a number I don't recognize, sent through an obviously bogus email address. But my blood runs cold when I read the contents of the message. It's just a single word. Kill. So it's 2.36 p.m. here, and about, what, 40 minutes ago, I got an email to my personal email that literally says,

Kill. It comes from, looks like it comes from a US number. We should Google it, explore it. Do you know anybody in South Carolina? No. It's a death threat. It's sent from a U.S. number, but it could be coming from anywhere. Who could have sent this? I panic. It might be Feliciano. But it can't be. We just got off the phone with him to set up our meeting, and this message came in 40 minutes ago. But I can't shake the feeling that we're being watched.

That someone in Boquete doesn't like that we're sniffing around asking questions about Chris in the sand. This has never happened to me before. Like, I may get dick pics, but not something that says kill. Has this ever happened to you? No, this has not happened to me. We go back and forth about whether to call the whole thing off with Feliciano. If it's not him who sent the message, could it be someone connected to him?

Could it be someone else altogether? Could we be walking into danger? The producers of this show offer me an out. My safety is the number one priority here. But if we are being intimidated, it means we must be close to uncovering something important. I have to go through with this. I'll meet Feliciano in a public place. To be safe. and the team will be parked outside the entire time in case things go sideways. With these security measures in mind, we call Jackie and Caroline as planned.

I want to be super transparent with both of you. Jeremy brought me on to this investigation. He's been working on this case for eight years. There's one guy that we think could potentially be involved. He's a tour guide. But he has rejected and refused all of Jeremy's interview requests. And is...

come to my hotel on another occasion and threaten me. So I can't really go with Mariana to his house or anything like that to speak with him. So... If I say that I'm going to go as a journalist to ask for an interview... He's also probably going to say no. For sure going to say no. But we do see a way that you could help us advance this case. So I want to try and go with you guys, if you agree, to literally say like...

We're three friends. We're tourists, which we are. I'm from Venezuela. You two girls are from Germany. This is not meant to be like a confrontation with him or anything. Nobody has been able to get close to this guy. And I think we have a really good chance. Jackie and Caroline have been very quiet listening to us pitch this wild undercover operation while they're just trying to have a nice vacation together.

And then Jackie pipes up with a question. What's the name of the guy? His name is Feliciano. I think I would be fine with it, yeah. I mean, I think we're going to be secure, so why not to bring some justice, or however you say it. Yeah, I would do it, yeah. Yeah, I think so too. Jackie and Caroline are in. We practice our lines, our backstories, what we're going to say when we meet Feliciano. We'll pretend to be tourists interested in hikes and tours in the area.

The pianista is one of the most popular trails in Boquete, so Feliciano's almost sure to mention it. And when he does, that's our opening to ask him about Chris in the Sand. But are we going to ask for the pianista or are we going to go there? I think he's probably going to offer pianista, so I think it's better if it comes from him. Okay. And then when he says it, he will be like, oh my god, we've heard so much about it. Isn't that one of those horrible cases? Is that true?

And from there, who knows what he might say. Feliciano's been all over the story from the beginning. He reported Chris in the Sand missing. He was involved in the search. He allegedly threatened people to keep their mouth shut about this case. He was connected to the discovery of the backpack and present when the remains were found.

Who knows what he might volunteer to a bunch of seemingly innocent female tourists. There's got to be an explanation about why Feliciano appears to have his fingers in every corner of this case. We need to get him talking and hope we don't blow our cover. This is Lost in Panama, an investigative series about the mysterious deaths of Chris Kramers and Lisanne Froon. I'm Mariana Tencio. This is Episode 5. Cinco muertos.

where Jeremy and I sit down to dissect this case in far more detail than we're able to get into the main show. There's so much more to talk about here. Rabbit trails we didn't have time for, and Jeremy and I dig deep in these After Show episodes. To listen to them, just go to castmedia.com slash castplus. We're a little nervous but I know we're doing this for a good cause. Thank you, sir. Not in my hands. All right, let's rock and roll, team. Let's move out. Lead the way.

Amen. In God's hands we are. To the right. We meet Feliciano at a coffee shop in downtown Boquete. I recognize him from his photo, waiting for us at a table. Feliciano is an older man, around 65. He's short and wiry, but also fit from walking in the mountains. His wrists and forearms are lined with thick ropes of muscle.

His hair is cropped short, and he's wearing field pants, a green jersey, and a khaki cap. Our guide, who set up this meeting for us, comes into the coffee shop with us, too, and greets Feliciano. We all sit down at the table. I take the chair next to Feliciano, and I think, this is the guy who maybe had something to do with the deaths of Chris and the Sam?

We can't record Feliciano, obviously, because we're undercover and he isn't agreeing to an interview. But the conversation is pretty straightforward. He goes through what gear we'll need to hike and camp. He says... bring a walking stick, bring plenty of water, and don't wear jeans. Then we talk about whether we have the right shoes to safely make it up and down the pianista. That's our segue. We take the plunge and ask Feliciano about Chris and Lisanne. We were like, wasn't there a case?

Of like these Dutch girls that disappeared in the pianista, is it real? And he said like, oh, it's very much real. And to our surprise, he's more than happy to talk about it. He didn't seem like he was uncomfortable talking about the, like, the case. He talked about the case? Well, I mean, we talked about it and he didn't seem like he was dodging the questions.

He openly tells us he participated in the search, that he helped find several of the women's remains. And it doesn't really sound like he's trying to hide anything. He said that he started the search and rescue, and it was almost like... He bragged about finding the boot. Yeah, he said that they found the boot. He went into more detail than I even would have imagined, talking about...

I met with them before. The boot, the backpack. I organized a search party. He's quick to tell us that he's the one who reported the missing. That Chris and Lisanne were supposed to do a tour with him. but decided to go alone, and how dangerous a decision that was. Women shouldn't go alone, he says. It seems a little victim-blamey, but also par for the course, for the culture here.

And hey, it could also be his way of securing business. And I said, well, are there dangers for women to go? And then he said, yeah, that's why you should go with me. You shouldn't go by yourselves. He talked up his credentials. Apparently, he's very popular with foreign tourists. In fact, most of his clients are Dutch. He speaks Dutch fluently. That and several other languages.

He was showing off his German to them, showing off his Dutch, showing off his English. When she asked, like, you asked him, can you teach me a Dutch word? I mean, we don't understand Dutch, but I was like... Okay, something, it's a little bit close to German. And then he said it in German too, so we would understand. And it was like, beautiful ladies. Schöne Mädchen. Or beautiful girls, actually, because Mädchen is a girl. He was like...

Weirdly flirtatious for a 60-plus year old man. Well, I'd say more than just flirtatious. This guy came off as charming, sure, but would literally... rubbed me the wrong way is that the entire time we were chatting with him, like throughout our whole conversation, Feliciano kept putting his hand on my knee, just touching me without my consent.

Several times. Can't believe he touched your leg. I know, all throughout, right? It was like... Touched your leg multiple times. Caroline noticed it too. When we tell Jeremy about this... He says Feliciano has a bit of a reputation. The last time I was here, the hotel that I stayed at had outlawed him from coming to their premises and soliciting.

client for his tours because he had such a bad track record of harassing the women while he was out with them in the jungle. And you can definitely see where he can go past the line. French tourist who contacted us for the Daily Beast articles, and when she rejected his advances, he became very upset, enraged, and she believed that he killed her dog.

over her turning him down. She said he comes across like this sweet, kind of elfish, charismatic, but that he has this terrible dark side. So we got the elfish... Charming version today. Yeah, because Cara even said to me like that when she saw him come in that, oh, he looks like kind of like he's small and like sweet, like a sweet old guy, you know, sweet old man.

Jackie and Caroline, they're right. Minus the leg touching, Feliciano comes off as literate, smart, charming, conversational in several languages. A good tour guide, probably. Let me ask you this. If this had been real, would you feel comfortable going on that hike with him?

Yeah, because he was really nice. Like, I thought he was really nice. But the touching her weird you out. Yeah, I mean, if it was me, I think I would feel a bit uncomfortable, yeah. So maybe I'd be like, mm. I didn't like that. It made me uneasy, yeah. The fact that he... Touched my leg at least five times, and I was just meeting him for the first time. Made me uneasy. Another thing that made me uneasy, at least at first, was the wallpaper picture Feliciano had on his phone.

So I noticed when I went over to check his WhatsApp, when he was like bragging about having all these Dutch clients, I noticed there was a picture of a beautiful young woman on the screensaver of his phone. And he said, she's my daughter. So he talked about the fact that he had two other kids, boy and girl. And one of our security guys, like casually sitting at another table said, oh, I haven't seen Tito in a while. And then he said, Tito's living with me.

Tito, that's Feliciano's adopted son. Jeremy recognizes the name too. He says the son's real name is Henry, but everyone calls him Tito. He's 32 now, so he would have been 24 back in 2014, roughly the same age as Chris and Lesanne. Now that I've actually met Feliciano, I'm not really sure what else we expected him to say.

Confess? Right there in the coffee shop? If anything, he was completely comfortable talking about Chris in the sand and his involvement in the search. I mean, sure, he flirted with us and touched my leg. But he seemed knowledgeable and not a terrible person. And he's worked with a ton of clients, including lots of Dutch tourists that he obviously has not murdered.

He doesn't really seem like someone who's got a lot to hide. But if Feliciano isn't involved somehow, why is he allegedly trying to silence people like Martina, his neighbors, and employees in Alto Romero? Could he be covering for someone else? We decide to talk to someone who might know more about him, another local guide who participated in the search and knows Feliciano. Verissimo Fuentes.

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When we meet with Verissimo, I'm struck by how much he resembles Feliciano. They're about the same age, and he's just as lean and wiry with muscle from a life spent outdoors. He looks like he's ready to set out. into the jungle in his hiking boots and army shorts, a Cineproc cap, and waterproof jacket. We ask him about Feliciano. What kind of man is Feliciano Gonzalez? He owns a ranch close to where the human remains were found.

The son has problems. Very similar to what he's telling us. His son? Does he mean Tito? And what does he mean by problems? He believes that Tito Gonzalez is a person who, though he appears tranquil at times, can explode into violence. You know, drunk or... When he's drinking, he can become violent. He changes. Okay. So Feliciano Santito might have anger issues, especially when he's drunk.

And that's not all. And he was with the Dutch girls in the discotheque. Wait a minute. We weren't expecting this. Actually saying that Feliciano's son Tito, who might be a violent drunk, was spotted at a nightclub with Chris in the sand? El grupo de los amigos de Henry Gonzalez. He believes Chris and Lisanne were seen at a local disco with the son of Feliciano Gonzalez, Henry Tito Gonzalez. What day was that? What day was that? That was Sunday, the 30th of March.

two days before Kristen Lisanne went missing. So, two days before their pianista hike, Chris and Lisanne were allegedly seen at a club in Boquete with Feliciano's son, and not just Tito, but a bunch of Tito's friends. We asked Verissimo who can corroborate the story. Many people saw it. Okay. He's very sure of this.

This is an amazing lead, if it's true. Perissimo is not just talking about anyone. This is Feliciano's son. If Tito was involved in Chris in the Sands' deaths, It could explain a lot about Feliciano's behavior. A father potentially covering for his son. We have to get back out there and find out more about Tito.

And we have to do it before anyone catches on to what we're doing. I've already gotten one death threat on this trip, and I don't want any more. But then Verissimo says something that stops me cold. Five deaths. What? Pardon? Five deaths. Five deaths? He says five dead. He says five people were killed after Chris and Lisanne went missing. Five people. Five dead. This case is getting bigger by the second. We have a name of another person of interest. Henry...

Tito Gonzalez. And a possible sighting of Kristen Lisanne with Tito two nights before their disappearance. And now the possibility of more murders. It's time to bring in the big guns. It's time to call our private investigator. We meet again with Martin Ferrara, the private eye who previously told us about the discovery of the backpack. We ask, what can he tell us about Tito in connection?

with the deaths of Kristen Lisanne. There are whispers all over the internet about Tito's involvement, but this is the first we've heard about it from someone in the guiding community. Martin's way ahead of these rumors. He says he's been looking at Tito for years, and he tells us exactly why. Because it's very likely he would have done something like that.

He doesn't care about other people's feelings. When he would see a dog on the street, he would get in his car and kill it. He would run them over with his car to kill them. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a doctor. But I know from my past work that these are signs of a person who can be considered a psychopath. All this time, we've been suspicious of Feliciano, but it's starting to look like he might be covering for his potentially psychopathic son. If Verissimo is right,

that Chris and Lisanne were out partying with Tito and his friends, that opens so many possibilities about what could have happened to them. We ask Martin, does he have any idea who Tito's friends are?

He does. He names names. A whole pack of guys. Or what some in Latin America call a pandilla. Edwin, Sam John Downer, Henry Gonzalez. All young men, all of whom were in their early to mid-20s back in 2014. Martin says it's very possible Chris in the sand spent time with the pandilla in the days before they disappeared. We ask about the alleged sighting at the discotheque that Verissimo just told us about. Martin says...

he can do us one better. He has an anonymous informant, another young man in Boquete, who told him Kristen Lisanne bought drugs from members of the pandilla. And he has this interview on tape. You have to listen to the audio I'm going to give you. The audio and the videos, okay? So you can take them. He plays us the recording of his interview with this young man. The informant asked to remain anonymous as he fears reprisal from the pandilla. So we won't name him. And we've altered his voice.

Martin says the informant told him Chris in the sand wanted to buy cannabis while in Boquete. They spoke with a local young man named Israel, who said he could find weed for them. His name is Israel Guerra. This guy became friends with them. They talked and they agreed to go out together. After, the girls asked him if he knew anyone in Boquete that knew where to get marijuana.

According to the informant, Israel put Kristen Lissan in contact with one of the guys in the pandilla. His name is Sam John Downer. There's this guy who is friends with Israel, and he talked with him. Sam John Downer. Israel talked to Sam John Downer to get him drugs. You need to understand, while weed is decriminalized in much of the U.S. and parts of Europe, it's still a very serious crime to sell or consume it in Panama. In other words...

In the Netherlands, if you want weed, you can just walk into a coffee shop. But in Panama, if you want weed, you have to deal with criminals. People who might be dangerous. People who aren't shy about breaking the law. The informant goes on. He says Chris in the sand later attended a house party with Tito and the others on March 31st, the day before they went missing.

The house party took place in a neighborhood called Palo Alto, on the outskirts of Boquete. The house belongs to a member of the bandilla named Cesar Cuero. That means the crow, Serracin. So he got him the drugs, and they went to Cesar Cervantes.

That's his name. They went to his house. And then after, I'm not sure if they stayed at the house. I'm not sure what happened. We can hear Martin on the tape. asking the informant who exactly was at the party. They told me Henry was there, Israel was there, there was Sam John, Sauroson was there. And the girls. The person who told me, well, it was like he didn't want to tell me directly the gringuitas were there. But he did tell me there were two foreigners there.

That's a nickname for Edwin, whose family owns a chain of restaurants called Sabroson in town. And then there's Henry, Tito, and Sam John Downer, who apparently had the drugs. and Israel, the guy who allegedly put Chris in the sand in touch with the pandilla. We're hearing all of them may have been at a party with Chris in the sand the night before they went for that hike and disappeared.

But nothing about a party ever turned up in the 3,000-page case file. No report of it was ever made. If these guys partied with Chris in the sand, no one mentioned it to the police. Why didn't any of these young men come forward after Chris on the Sand went missing? Martin is particularly skeptical of Tito, Feliciano's son.

He wonders if Tito didn't mention the party to his dad after all. What's strange to me and suspicious is that Mr. Henry Gonzalez, who was supposedly at the party, that he didn't tell his dad. Hey, they were with us. Was there something he was trying to hide? Obviously. And if Tito did tell Feliciano about the party... That might explain why Feliciano's been so busy trying to keep this case quiet. We can only speculate what Tito may have said to his father. But put it this way.

Feliciano probably knew his son was a loose cannon, and he knew the women were missing. Whatever information was or wasn't shared with Feliciano in the first days after Chris in the Sands' disappearance, it is possible that Feliciano might have known or suspected that his son was involved. It's like Henry's dad is trying to cover something up. Just one wrinkle. Martin's anonymous informant wasn't actually at the supposed party.

He heard about it from a neighbor, another mutual friend of the pandilla. Plus, he says another friend drove past the house party that night and recognized the cars of the young men. He passed by and saw the party he recognized. You live around town. You can't tell me you wouldn't recognize Autozone's car. Sure.

Seeing Edwin's distinctive car parked in front of the house party is compelling. But can anyone actually place Chris in the sand with the pandilla? Do we know for sure they were even there?

Then Martin gives us the name of another witness, Osman Falenzuela. Martin says Osman saw Chris in the sand with the pandilla earlier that afternoon on March 31st. He was in Boquete's town square and saw a double cabin red pickup truck parked there. He saw Chris in the sand sitting in it, along with four members of the pandilla. At the parking boquete, he sees a red pickup and he sees Mr. Edwin Aguirre, who was driving the car, and Mr. Sam John Downer.

who is in the passenger seat. In the back of the pickup, he sees Henry Gonzalez and Jose Manuel Murgas and the two Dutch women sitting in the middle. So the roll call is Tito, Sam John Downer, Jose Manuel Murgas, and behind the wheel, Edwin Aguirre, a.k.a. Sabrosong, and Chris in the Sand. all sitting in a red pickup truck. Thanks for listening to Lost in Panama. We'd really appreciate it if you subscribed, rated and reviewed on Apple Podcasts. Gracias. Thank you so much.

jogs my memory. I remember reading about a red pickup truck in the case file when we were going through witness statements. Someone saw a red pickup truck near the pianista on the day that Chris and the Sam went missing. We ask Martin if he knows who saw the truck. Yeah, it was Mrs. Doris. She tells me she sees the woman go up. About 20, 25 minutes later, she sees a red pickup truck go up, and then she sees the red pickup truck go down. All right. How many double cabin red pickup trucks?

Can there be in Boquete? If Chris and the Sand were seen with the pandilla in a red pickup truck on March 31st, And then a red pickup was seen near the pianista the very next day on April 1st. That can't be a coincidence, can it? Maybe we can tie the red truck to Chris in the Sands' disappearance.

We scramble back to the pianista to find Doris, the woman who saw the truck. Doris says she saw the red pickup, entered this trailhead where we're walking now, about 20 minutes. after Chris and Lisanne passed by. But when we get to Doris' house to ask her about the truck, we find out she's sick in bed. Unfortunately, she's sick and she can't talk to us. We spoke with her son. But she described the pickup truck. Pickup rojo, doble cabina. Double cabin pickup truck. Vidrios polarizados.

Yanda Sanchez. Okay, with oversized tires and tinted windows is the description that Doris told Demartine. Okay, and it's also described in the police report. Doris isn't the only one who saw the red pickup truck. There's one more eyewitness to the red pickup truck passing here, and we're going to talk to her now. Her name is Anita.

And she's sisters with Martina, one of the first people we spoke to for this podcast. Martina is the Ungabe Bugle woman who lives right at the entrance to the pianista. and saw Kristen Lisanne hike past her house on April 1st. Aneda, Martina's sister, says she didn't see Kristen Lisanne herself that day. But she does recall the truck. I didn't see the Dutch girls. I only heard the sound of the car. I saw a car go up. It was a red pickup truck.

I was there when I went to hang up some clothes. I didn't see the girls, but my sister says, since she was at the end of the row, that she saw them. Before we leave Aneda, she mentions something else. There are many people that kill women around here. We still don't know if Chris and Lisanne were murdered. But this statement from Aneda is ominous. We ask if she has any insight into why femicide is so rampant in the region.

When a man does that to a woman, well, you have to ask him why he does it. Well, I'd say that there are times when a person doesn't take care of themselves. If you know you have a husband, you have to take care of him. And if you have kids... too, you have to take care of them too. But if a woman goes with another man, give him then caresses and sweet nothings, then the man will come. What Aneda tells us strikes a chord.

I know how stories like this can go, especially in this part of the world. I feel it's my responsibility as a journalist and a Latina to change this narrative that places blame.

on the women and girls who become victims of violence. That's why solving this case is so important to me. We've heard that Kristen LaSanne spent a lot of time with these guys before they died. maybe dancing, partying, getting high. The culture of machismo and the expectations of women, particularly if those women are perceived as being down for a good time.

That can be a dangerous combination. What if the guys made advances and Chris in the sand said no? What if these guys later followed them, say, in a red pickup truck? Like the one Aneida saw on April 1st, 20 minutes after Chris on the Sands started up the pianista. We dig into the police report.

Investigators did follow up on sightings of a red pickup truck near the pianista on the day Chris in the Sand went missing. And police ran the plates to determine who owned the truck and went to talk to them. Only, it wasn't Edwin. The truck was owned by a couple who said they rented out the truck to a local florist. And that florist sent the truck with a group of his workers.

Four young men, as a matter of fact, who were in town that day for a flower fair. We're at a dead end. So we back up and regroup. We've heard that Crescendo San were spotted several times in the company of Tito and the Pandilla. They were allegedly at a discotheque in Boquete on March 30th. We heard they bought drugs from them on March 31st. Osmond saw them in the town square in a red pickup truck that same day.

And later that night, they were spotted at a party at Cuervo's house in Palo Alto. And maybe, maybe that red pickup truck followed Crescent Lisanne to the pianista the next morning.

Or maybe it was just some florists in town for the day. But here's the problem. Chris and the Sand both kept diaries of their trip, recording what they did every day. And there's just no mention of these guys in either Chris or Lisanne's diary entries, which is strange. When they met a group of guys in Bocas del Toro, they wrote about him. So why not the pandilla in Boquete?

Are these sightings even real? We ask Martin, how credible is Osman as a witness? Osman's the one who saw Kristen the Sam in the red pickup truck, or so he says. Martin tells us a little about him. Osman was 22 at the time, in 2014. He knew these guys and wouldn't have misidentified them, even though he wasn't technically part of the pandilla. Mr. Osman, I feel like he always wanted to belong to the group. He had that wish to be part of the group.

Osman is the only person claiming to see Chris in the sand with the pandilla with his own eyes and not just second or third hand. But we can't go talk to Osman to hear it straight from him. Because Osman dies four days after seeing the Dutch woman. Osman was one of the five people that Verissimo told us about. The five dead. Cinco muertos.

in the wake of Chris in the Sand's disappearance. That includes three young men from Boquete, who all died mysteriously in the year after Chris in the Sand went for that hike on April 1st. Osman was the first of the young men to die. He was found dead in a river with a suspicious head injury just days after Chris in the Sand went missing. And a year after that...

One of the young men he saw in the red pickup truck, José Manuel Murgas, was run down by a car. And then there's taxi driver Leonardo Arturo González. who drove Kristen Lisanne to the pianista. He was found drowned in a shallow river just a few weeks before Murgas on March 3, 2015. Three young men, dead,

in less than a year. And all connected to this case? Come on, what's going on here? We ask Martin, the private investigator working with us, what he knows about these deaths. He says, for starters, the hit and run that killed Murgas, one of the four pandilla members spotted in the truck, he believes it was no accident. He had blows to the head that are not compatible with a hit-and-run accident. Martin says two witnesses who came forward...

made it sound like Murgas was run over on purpose. A city official from the Alto Boquete area tells me. I heard a car pull up and they open it like a pickup truck door and they close it. They backed the car up and they accelerated and drove off. Martin says another woman who lives across the street from where this happened heard voices coming from the car. On the property, across the street from where they found Mr. José Manuel Murgas,

She says she heard a vehicle that she stopped and heard some voices. And she heard some voices saying, hurry up, leave him there, throw him, leave him there. Come on, come on, come on. And what about Osman, our lone eyewitness? Martin tells us Osman drowned, according to the autopsy report. But it sounds like he had some help. And me... In my opinion, they hit Osman and they left him in the river to drown. They ruled that it had been a death because he had drowned. So it was an accident.

And so, Osman's family fought the verdict the lawyer did, for the manner of death to be changed. And now, after the fight, the manner of death is homicide. This is huge. Forget rumor or conjecture. Osman was murdered. Osman claimed he saw Chris and Lisanne with the bandilla, and then he was murdered four days after they disappeared. No one was ever arrested. And what about...

these other suspicious deaths that followed. Martín says it can't be a coincidence. He believes the pandilla, this group of young men, is responsible for all of these deaths. And for the deaths. of Chris and Lisanne. The Dutch woman, Lisanne and Chris, probably in the last minutes, they were with this group of guys.

I am certain that Mr. Osman Valenzuela, in the last minutes of his life, was with this group of guys. I am certain that Jose Manuel Murgas, in his last minutes of life, was with this group of guys. This group of guys, the pandilla, the same pandilla spotted with Chris on the sand at a discotheque, in the park, at a party, and three young men who died under suspicious circumstances.

So far, we've heard a lot of whispers in this town, but no one can definitively link these deaths, or the pandilla, to the deaths of Chris and the San. But it's Osman who seems like our inn. He says he saw Chris and Lisanne in the park, in the red truck, with the pandilla the day before they went missing. And Osman was the first to die.

just days after Chris in the Sand disappeared. And his death, unlike the others, has actually been ruled a homicide. We can't talk to Osman, but Martin has an idea. Martin's been in touch with Osman's mother for years now. She was instrumental in getting her son's death ruled a homicide, and she's been working with Martin to bring the killers to justice.

She says she knows who's responsible. And Martin says she's got quite a story to tell. Mothers have a way of finding things out. If she knows why her son was murdered and who did it, she could lead us straight to Chris in the Sands killers and bring this whole web of suspicion into focus. More on that next time.

They killed him because he knew about the Dutch girls. They have no scruples with those girls. Do you think they're going to have it with me? We've found what may be... the burial site. In this area, I remember walking the path that connects to the suspicious house. Like every question I've ever had about this case was answered by this woman today.

Lost in Panama is hosted by me, Mariana Atencio, with original reporting by Jeremy Kreit and Mariana Atencio, chief investigative correspondent Jeremy Kreit, written by Jeremy Kreit. and Trent K. Maverick. Produced by Trent K. Maverick. Executive Producers Colin Thompson, Julien Favre, and Jeremy Kreit. Supervising Producer DJ Lubel. Co-producer, Mona Hassan. Associate producer, Lenora Quiñones. Translator, Lenora Quiñones. Editing by Steven Perez, Anton Doty, and Alex Gonzalez.

Mixing and Mastering by Matt Zul. Voice actors, Flavia Carbone, Alejandro Luis Castillo, and Mateo Maya. Travel and Logistics Coordinator, Brooke MacArthur. On-site audio recording by Richard Carlos. On-site photography by Luis Iga Garza. Original music written by Colin Thompson. Orchestration, Arrangement, and Additional Compositions by Andrew Gerliger and Jesse Houdin. Music recorded at the resort studios. Music engineered by Caleb Morris. Assistant Engineer.

Jordan DiDonato. Instrumentalists Matt Ordaz, Phil Glenn, Laura Bedall, Jennifer Wu, Jean-Paul Barjon, Sam Solorsano, Jesse Houdin, and Trevor Gomez. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions and APM. Cover art by Paula Henches. Special assistance by Elizabeth Muñoz, Martín Eduardo Ferrara O'Donnell. and Atmet Villarreal. Very special thanks to Susan Rezepka.