Background
Kris Kremers (21) and Lisanne Froon (22) were two Dutch students from Amersfoort who travelled to Panama to study Spanish and volunteer with children. In April 2014 they were staying in Boquete, a mountain town in Chiriquí province known for its dense forest and hiking trails.
They set off on the El Pianista trail, a forested and rugged route, without a guide.
News of the disappearance drew wide coverage in the Netherlands and internationally.
What happened
Kremers and Froon began the hike at about 11 am on 1 April 2014 and did not turn up for a meeting with a local guide the next day. About six hours into the walk, both phones tried to reach emergency numbers (112 and 911), but no call connected because there was no signal. The phones were switched on and off several times in the following days.
Their families arrived on 6 April, and a search of about ten days was carried out with Dutch police and local teams; a reward was offered. It produced no result.
Investigation
On 14 June 2014 a local woman handed in Froon's backpack, which she said she had found on a riverbank near Alto Romero in Bocas del Toro. The two phones, a camera and other belongings were in good condition. The camera held about 90 photographs taken on the night of 8 April in near-total darkness.
In the following weeks, searches along the Culubre River turned up bones and clothing, and DNA tests confirmed they belonged to the two women. The remains found were only a small part of the total. Panamanian authorities treated the case as an accident, and Dutch pathologist Frank van der Goot considered foul play implausible, believing the pair most likely got lost and fell from a cliff. No official cause of death was determined, and the Panamanian handling of the case drew criticism.
Froon's battery ran out on 4 April, while Kremers' phone was switched on several times until 11 April, when it was turned off for the last time. These details raised the possibility that the pair survived for at least a week after the hike, but no firm conclusion was reached.
Where it stands today
The case continues to attract attention because of unanswered questions: why the backpack surfaced later, how the photographs came to be taken, and how the two spent their final days are not fully known. The families have worked to keep their daughters' memory alive and to raise awareness about hiker safety.