Featured Image Credit: YouTube
Harley Young
Chilling images show the mysterious final moments of two backpackers who vanished while travelling through a jungle in Panama.
Kris Kremers, 21, and Lisanne Froon, 22, went for a hike through a forested area near the Baru volcano in Boquete, Panama and were never seen again.
The incident, which happened back in 2014, has continued to baffle researchers and haunts people to this day.
The women, who had been planning the trip for six months, were hiking around the jungle for around two weeks before the fateful day that they went missing.
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Since their disappearance, a number of theories have been brought to the surface, with many making up their own reasons as to how and why the pair went missing.
Dick Steffens, a former detective from Amsterdam, the city which the girls had travelled from, believed that Kremers could still be alive and had been kidnapped by a sex trafficker.
Steffens claimed that the investigation made by Panama police had been botched and swept under the rug.
While others think the two young women had been involved in an accident and Kremers had died when trying to get help for herself and Froon.
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However, Dutch authors, Marja West and Jürgen Snoeren claim their book Lost in The Jungle, solved the mystery.
Not long after the women's disappearance, a backpack with their phones, camera, money and items of clothing washed up by the side of the Culebra river.
A series of photos were discovered on the camera, including a number which were almost completely dark and had clearly been taken at night.
Some of the pictures show the women's belongings spread out on some rocks next to a plastic bag and wrappers. While another appeared to show the back of Kremers' head.
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Later that year, fragments of bone belonging to one of the women had washed up also.
“That’s when we decided to work out what had really happened for ourselves,” West explained. “We started by looking on the internet, where it was extremely difficult to separate fact from fiction. We saw facts re-appear as if publications were copying one another. You could really move in any direction.”
She eventually got in touch with Steffens who 'claimed a certain Stefan W. had come forward, saying Kris Kremers had ended up in the sex trade', though nothing came of it.
However, the real breakthrough came when the authors got ahold of the complete police files, forensic reports and autopsy reports along with the help of former Panamanian public prosecutor Betzaïda Pitti. This helped outline the final 11 days of the women's lives.
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“It actually came as a surprise to us too, but our conclusion had to be that it was an accident. It took us quite some time to get there,” said West.
“Once we had the files, we could understand where people outside the investigation got sidetracked and why.
"The police were inundated by tips, each had to be checked out, losing them valuable time. It became a hell of a job."
No official cause of death has been ruled.