This is an old case, and the Panamanian official case where the crime occurred has been officially closed. However, the official conclusion is hugely controversial. Other anecdotal speculation and analysis, due to the lack of evidence and the difficulty of explaining doubts, have also raised questions.
There are massive analyses of the case on both Chinese and foreign networks, and there are also enthusiastic people who organize teams to visit the scene of the crime.
However, the case of eight years ago is still suspicious and confusing.
The author will make a comprehensive discussion here for the reader to judge.
Case:
Two youthful and beautiful Dutch girls, Chrissy Kramers (21) and Lisana Furlong (22 years old), met in part-time work, both have tall figures (Collis 1.67 meters, Lisana 1.84 meters) and blond hair, both are equally energetic, because of the common interests, the two have become girlfriends without words.
The picture on the right is Chrissy, and the picture on the left is Lisana
Both are from the city of Ammersfoort in the Dutch province of Utrecht.
Chrissy is a junior at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, specializing in art education, while Lisana has just graduated from derWend University in the Netherlands with a degree in applied psychology.
A beautiful life is unfolding in front of the girl.
They are all preparing for a trip to Latin America where they are going to learn Spanish.
You know a lot of foreigners learn languages. After studying for a while, you have to go to the home country of the language to learn, and learn the language in a language environment. They often put travel vacations together with language lessons.
Chrissy and Lisana did just that. The girls are also ready to do some public welfare, mainly teaching the local children Dutch. This is also an opportunity offered to them by a language school in Panama.
They have saved up money for six months for the trip while also working in a café.
Finally, in March 2014, the beautiful holiday + language course class arrived.
About to save money, they traveled to Houston, Costa Rica, and then sailed into Panama on March 15. There, they took language courses and also visited many places to see and play.
On March 30, they arrived in Boquete, Panama, a mountain town, where they planned to volunteer for a month at a local school while continuing to learn Spanish at a local Spanish school.
But, curiously, despite having scheduled their trip a few months earlier, when they arrived at the local school in Boquet, they were told that the plan had been canceled. If you want to continue volunteering, you need to wait for the message.
Originally volunteering at the school could solve the problem of food and accommodation, but now the situation has changed and the place to live has become a problem.
Fortunately, they eventually found a homestay 25 kilometers away from the school and settled down temporarily.
They also signed up at a nearby language school called Riverside Campus to continue their Spanish language.
In the process, they learned about some of the local tourist attractions and determined a sightseeing plan through a travel agency, which recommended a man named Feliciano Lopez. The locals of Gonzalez do their guided tours from April 2 to April 5.
On April 1, to pass the time, they first went to the nearby tourist attraction, the Pianist's Trail. The Pianist Trail is a path that leads to a nearby hilltop, surrounded by greenery, wild, but not desolate, and is a popular tourist destination.
They set off on the morning of April 1, 2014. When passing by a restaurant before entering the mountain, the restaurant owner reminds them to pay attention to safety and lends his dog to his companions to increase safety.
However, until the evening, the girls did not return. The dog ran back to the restaurant by himself.
The owner of the homestay was still a little suspicious that the girls did not return in time, but thought that perhaps the girls had gone to town again and played hi, so they did not care too much and slept first.
The next morning, the guide Gonzalez came to the door and said that the girls had made an appointment with them to meet at the "Riverside Campus" language school the day before to go on a tour, but the time for the gathering had passed, and the two of them did not show up, so they went to the homestay to see if the plan had changed.
He was accompanied by Irene, a teacher at riverside campus.
The owner of the homestay was already suspicious, and quickly opened the door with a spare key, but found that the girls had not returned overnight.
They felt that something was wrong, but Gonzalez said that the disappearance needed to be reported 24 hours a day before it could be accepted, so everyone had to wait a little longer.
By the evening of April 2, the girls were still missing, so the tour guide and Irene reported the case to the police station. At the same time, the parents of the girl who were far away in the Netherlands were informed.
The girl's parents' response was even more worrying: they contacted their families every day as agreed, but on April 2 there was no news, and Chrissy's father sent text messages to his daughter and did not get a reply.
The local police launched a search and rescue operation, which was already on April 3.
The parents of the distraught girls also arrived from the Netherlands and brought with them Dutch forensic professionals.
The search and rescue made no progress, so the scale of search and rescue continued to expand and escalate, and the local police used a large number of police forces, police dogs, helicopters and other auxiliary means, but under the continuous and large-scale search, people found nothing.
There was no trace of the two girls.
Ten weeks later, around June 17, on the banks of a river five kilometres away from the pianist's path, a peasant woman found a backpack and handed it to the police.
The farmer claimed that she had found the backpack on her way to work in the fields, and that she had passed by yesterday, and that she was pretty sure she hadn't seen it at the time. That is, the backpack was suddenly there.
The appearance and contents of the backpack confirm the "sudden appearance" to some extent, because this backpack is almost brand new, and this ordinary backpack is not waterproof, and the contents of the bag are kept dry and intact.
However, Panama had already entered the rainy season, and by the time the backpack was found, it had been raining for two weeks in the surrounding area.
What's in the bag: Two brasses, two pairs of sunglasses, an eighty-three dollar bill, a bottle of mineral water with water, Chrissy's medicare card, Lisana's passport, an iPhone (later confirmed to belong to Chrissy), a Samsung phone, and a Canon camera (all later confirmed to belong to Lisana).
The backpack was confirmed to belong to Lisana.
Discovery of Lisana · Furlong's backpack and contents. All remain dry.
Two phones have run out of power, and the Canon Powershot SX270 HS still has half the power, and the digital devices are in good condition.
After inspection, the two people's mobile phones have been missing since April 1 to the emergence of mobile phones, and they have made many calls, all of which are emergency alarm calls (Dutch emergency telephone 112, Panama police telephone 911), but none of them are effectively connected. One of them was interrupted after two seconds of on (it is impossible to tell whether it is a hang-up or a signal interruption).
There are no records of other calls being made or being called.
Investigators thought the photos would stop providing valuable clues, but when they turned on the camera, the photos just made them confused and weird.
The photos in the camera are divided into two groups.
The first group of photos, dated April 1, was taken by the girls during the day on the pianist's trail. The picture is clear, the photographer's purpose is clear, the expressions of the characters are mostly natural and cheerful, and the external environment is sunny and beautiful.
As shown in the following figure:
The other group of 90 shots, all from unknown locations, was filmed within three hours of April 8 between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. The purpose of the shooting is unknown, the picture is mostly blurred, and the surrounding area is almost completely black, which is not a normal shooting at all.
As shown in the following figure:
What is the purpose of the shooting?
No one knows how the girls went missing, and no one knows what happened in that dark tropical forest a week after they disappeared.
At the same time, police found that the photos marked 509 in the camera were deleted. Police attempts to recover photos failed. Technicians say the photo was deleted by professional operation on a computer, not directly on the camera. (Deleted on camera can be recovered, special treatment on pc cannot be recovered).
This photo is in a special position, and between the above two groups of photos, it should be the last one of the first group or the first of the second group, most likely taken between the girls' enthusiastic tour photos and the eerie and inexplicable night photos.
In short, the question about calls and photos, especially night photos, because they are too weird, give people a feeling of non-human shooting, which triggers a lot of discussion, and some people even speculate that this is some kind of animal, such as a monkey, picking up a camera, taking a random shot. We will discuss this in more detail in our future case analysis.
After the backpack was found, the search and rescue focused along the river channel and invited six local indigenous people familiar with the terrain to participate in the search.
Two days later, on June 19, Chrissy's denim shorts were found on the east bank of the river, a few kilometers from where the backpack was found. Here, one says that shorts are found neatly folded on rocks, and the other says that shorts are found in the river.
At the same time, in the bushes near the discovery of shorts, one found a hiking boot with a broken foot and a pair of pelvic bones.
After DNA comparison, it was confirmed that the bones belonged to the missing girls.
The broken foot in the shoe belonged to Lisana. Because there are no scratches and bite marks on the shoe or foot, according to the wound section, the forensic doctor deduces that it is a natural falloff, and the foot also has marks of fractures, but it is impossible to determine whether the owner of the foot broke the bone before he died or whether the fracture was formed by a high fall or impact after death.
The pelvic bone belonged to Chrissy. The pelvis has a high concentration of phosphate components and appears to have been bleached.
It is almost certain that the girls have suffered an accident, especially Chrissy, whose pelvic bones have been found, and there is no hope of survival.
So, what the hell is going on? What was the cause of the girls' deaths?
At the repeated insistence of the family, the search continued.
On August 29, a group of skeletons of the girls were found in the surrounding area.
Curiously, however, the skeletons found in June, such as the pelvic bones, had decayed and weathered clean; the feet had even fallen off.
The skeletons found in August carry human tissue, and even the tissues are in the early stages of decay.
After many rounds of investigation, the cause of the girls' deaths has remained a mystery.
In October 2014, Panamanian officials came to a conclusion.
They believe that the girls have no problems on the pianist's path, and that they want to continue exploring the depths of the forest at the end of the path, taking a dangerous, unexplored forest trail. The two were lost in the dense forest and could not find their way back. In the process of trying to get out of the forest, Chrissy fell from a high, was seriously injured and unable to move, and eventually died, Lisana tried to find help after taking care of her for a few days, but also fell, and eventually both of them died in isolation.
Panamanian officials defined the incident as an accident.
However, this has been met with numerous doubts.
Many have pointed out that Panama's official conclusions cannot justify the fact that the girls died of murder.
There are many unexplained aspects of the official conclusions (see the case analysis later).
In this regard, the Internet has triggered a large number of discussions, and everyone's analysis of the incident is divergent, and the aftermath is continuous. People are trying their best to find and guess the truth, and some netizens personally visit the scene, hoping to find clues and old mud claw marks.
However, the conclusions are still inconsistent and confusing to this day.
Case Analysis:
The divergence is mainly divided into two interpretations:
First, the accident theory.
This is also the official conclusion.
The general analysis and conclusion is that the girls got lost in the mountains and completely reversed their way, going farther and farther, deeper and deeper into the direction of the forest hinterland.
While looking for a way back, both fell. Chrissy fell to her head, seriously injured or even killed; Lisana fell to her foot (the left foot that was later left in her boots), and Lisana was unable to take Chrissy out of the valley.
The two only had to constantly call the police for help, but because of the mountains and rivers, there was no signal to connect to the outside world.
On the night of April 8, Lisana climbed up to a high place and used a camera flash to warn the sky, but did not attract the attention of rescuers.
Eventually, the two girls trapped in the forest died one after another.
This conclusion can first explain the situation of telephone call records and signal search records.
Girl mobile phone use record sheet
As can be seen from the results of the check on the girl's mobile phone;
1. At 16:39 on April 1, the girls have begun to call the EU police number 112, perhaps they have realized that they are lost or in danger.
2. Then, from April 2 to 6, they were trying to contact the outside world; the phone was never answered, only on April 2, it may have been connected instantaneously, but it was interrupted before a valid call was formed.
3. Since 13:57 on April 5, Chrissy's mobile phone has tried to signal search without a boot password. Then, no matter who the user of the phone is, she/he should not know the boot password of Chrissy's phone. So, it is likely that At this time Chrissy fell into a coma or even died.
In this way, the accident theory can basically explain the phone call record: both are trying to contact the outside world because they are lost or have encountered trouble that they cannot overcome. Later, Chrissy was injured and unconscious, because her mobile phone was out of battery, Lisana could only use Chrissy's mobile phone, but she did not know the password, and forgot that the mobile phone could be an emergency alarm without a password, just searching for a signal.
But for the two young girls caught up in a strange forest, the search for signals did not seem to be trying hard enough. Only about one or two tastings a day seem to fit well with what people imagine through common sense.
Look at the photos again, focusing on the 90 photos taken from 1-4 a.m. on April 8.
Accident theory can also basically explain the plausibility of weird photos.
These "shooting" photos of the sky are actually using the camera flash to emit signals to attract the attention of the rescue helicopter.
The highlight in the photo is the rain.
Photographs like this are "roads" in the dark forest illuminated with flashes. It may have been Lisana's use to illuminate the road in order to climb to a high place.
In addition, the accident theory also believes that Lisana cleverly recorded unusual events with a camera, leaving clues for future generations.
The photograph is thought to be the back of Chrissy's head, and the wound was seen, but this was not officially recognized. Chrissy was injured, and as of now, it's only speculation.
There are also some more "thrilling" photos, such as:
This photo seems to be taking pictures of the dark forest, but after technical processing to enhance the lighting, it looks like this:
The red line indicates what appears to be a female corpse, which is interpreted as possibly the body of Chrissy lying at the bottom of the riverbed.
In short, there is a view that the eerie photos of the night are taken with a purpose, or to send a signal, or to find a way, or to record the accident situation, leaving clues.
However, neither the photos showing the back of Chris's head nor the photos of her "falling in the river valley" clearly show the specific targets of the shooting, the injured photos do not see obvious wounds, and the "remains" are extremely unclear, and these photos are suspected of wearing chisels to varying degrees.
At the same time, the accident said that there was no explanation for why the two girls had gone beyond the plan, ventured into a strange forest, and why they had taken off their corsets and shorts while looking for directions, the mysterious appearance of the backpack and the inexplicable kept clean and dry, and why the large bones had not been found.
Second, the murder theory.
Because some of the cases in the accident theory could not be explained, some people raised the murder theory and believed that the Panamanian authorities had concealed the truth in order to prevent the homicide scandal from hitting the local economic pillar tourism industry.
The view of the theory of murder comes from speculations arising from doubts about the unexplainable circumstances of the accident theory, such as:
1. How did the girls walk down a strange forest trail? The girls were all smart people, and Lisana, who still had asthma and cough at the time, had made a temporary decision to explore unknown areas?
Judging from the girls' attire in shorts vests, they had no intention of protecting themselves from mosquitoes, and extrapolating from the simple belongings they carried on the hike, they had no plans to go further or spend the night in the mountains.
2. How did Lisana's backpack suddenly appear?
The backpack was not found until ten weeks later, and if the girls had struggled or had long since abandoned their backpacks, how could they have remained dry and clean in the tropical forest at the beginning of the rainy season?
It is hard to believe that there is no artificial external factor in this.
Most likely, the backpack was kept in a dry place by a third party very early.
3. If girls get lost in the forest for a week, how do the girls' corsets fold neatly and put them in their bags? Do they take off their corsets when they are in danger in the wild?
4, at the same time, they seem to have a regular way to call for help, basically between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., which seems to be inconsistent with their situation at that time - if they are lost for a week, shouldn't they randomly try their luck and call for help? Are there any third parties who deliberately use these calls to convey some kind of signal?
5. Why did Lisana waste precious electricity searching for signals many times? Doesn't she know that the phone can make an emergency call without entering the password to enter the interface?
6. If the photo that is believed to be the back of Chrissy's head is to show that she has been injured, unconscious or even dead, why not take the front photo? The information conveyed by the back of the head is clearly vague.
7, after a week of wandering in the tropical forest, it is also suspected that there has been a fall, why is Chrissy's hair so dry and clean?
8, the found pelvic bone has traces of bleaching, which may be explained by the role of tropical sunlight and water flow, while many other bones are corrupted and weathered to different degrees, some bones are clean, and some also have human tissues such as skin and flesh.
Except for the feet and pelvis, no large bones such as skulls, tibias, and vertebrae were found, which is a very unusual situation.
9. Who used professional techniques to delete MIG-509 photos on the computer, and why did they do so? Why did someone delete the photo and then put the camera back in the backpack left by the girl?
10. 90 photos taken at night, taken within three hours of 1-3 a.m. on April 8, where was the shooting location? Why don't people who are familiar with the environment recognize the location?
11, the pianist trail is the direction of the mountain, to the top of the mountain, you can return to the same way without difficulty. If the girl had been attracted by the scenery and overconfident, she would have continued to climb over the top of the mountain and explore in the direction of the distant mountain, not out of recognition of the wrong path, because the pianist's trail to the top of the mountain would end. If you continue to move forward, the landscape will be significantly different. The girls reached the top and did not return the same way and continued forward, unable to be in the opposite direction of the downhill in a misjudgment. It can only be: thinking that the trail can be folded back to the pianist's trail; wanting to continue the expedition; being tempted or coerced into going down a strange trail.
12. Although the pianist's trail is lonely and remote, it is not a wild place, and there are also people in the middle of the mountain. The unfamiliar trail that the girls may have walked, although rarely inhabited, was not a no-man's land. The netizens who discovered the case camped on this path, specially counted the number of people who passed through the trail, about 3 or 4 people passed through the path every day, there were indigenous shepherds, there were also local traders. So how can girls still get lost here after a massive search?
13, if they are lost and missing, then, the girls wearing T-shirts, shorts, how can they leave the path and go deep into the dense forest? Is it hiding from something?
14, there are a lot of mosquitoes, spiders, ants in the tropical forest, will they wear hollow T-shirts for a week?
15, why the dog with the girl has never appeared in the photo, according to common sense, girls who love small animals take the dog up the mountain, it is very likely to take a photo with the dog or take a photo with the dog. Now only the restaurant owner said that the dog had accompanied the girl up the mountain, but there was no trace of the dog.
16, leaving a special mark of the photo and the purpose of the photo is blurred after all is not the same concept. The night photos don't look like purposeful shots. If it is to use the flash to illuminate the road, why is there a large number of photos taken at an angle facing the sky? If it is to send a signal to the search and rescue helicopter, does it match the time of the helicopter's dispatch?
17, why the girls did not leave any last words or records of the situation, but through selfies, text messages and other means, they should have easily left these evidences, pointing out the direction for the seekers and telling their relatives what happened to them. Didn't they have a chance to do that?
18. Among the witnesses interviewed by the police, some of the owners of the small shop under the mountain pointed out that the girls had gone down the mountain in the afternoon. The specific details, the police did not release, is there no further investigation into this important clue?
In fact, the fact that the girls' bags can appear intact in the rain since they disappeared has already demonstrated the intervention of a third party. This mysterious third party was either involved in or informed of the girl's death.
Excluding the MIG-509, the first set of last photos in the camera was taken on the afternoon of April 1, 2014, and no more photos were taken until the night of April 8. The first call to the police occurred at 16:39 on April 1. So, was it on the afternoon of April 1 that the girl was in distress?
This is the last photo of the girls on April 1, and what happened afterwards is unknown.
All indications are that this is not a pure accident, but probably a criminal element.
So, who is the suspect?
There are several guesses:
1. Tour guide who reports the crime.
You may remember the day after the girl disappeared, who ran to the homestay to find the girl, it was the tour guide, Feliciano Gonzalez, and he was alone in the girls' room for half an hour before leaving. It has been suggested that this period of time would be enough for him to find evidence that he had met the girls and destroy them (he always denied having seen the girls).
At the same time, it was pointed out that the tour guide had an assistant, and it was the assistant's wife who found the clean backpack, which was also a bit too coincidental.
The tour guide also has a son, and if several people follow the girls and commit crimes, in terms of ability, they can completely control the girls.
Local tour guide Feliciano · Gonzalez
2. Local tribal natives.
As we said, the place where the girls disappeared is the wild tropical forest of Panama, but it is not a forbidden area for humans, and there are some tribal natives living in and around the forest. Even the pianist trail and the road to the top of the mountain and deeper into the forest are always overgrown. It is possible that the girl disappeared here, but after a large-scale search there was still no trace of them; rather, the figures of them going up and down the mountain could have been seen by strangers.
As we said, the backpack girl was discovered ten weeks after she disappeared, and after that, some of the remains of the girls were found around the place where the backpack was found. After DNA testing, it was found that some of the bones belonged to three other people, three people who could not be identified.
There is a theory that there is a custom of sacrifice among some natives, and it is possible that the girls have touched the nerves of some indigenous people and become victims of murder.
3. Restaurants on the pianist's trail.
Do you remember that when the girls passed by the pianist's trail, the restaurateur said that his dog had lent the girl, but in the evening, the dog ran back to the restaurant by himself.
First, there are doubts about whether the restaurateur is telling the truth. Because, if the girls really carry dogs, according to the usual situation, there should be a photo with the dog, but the dog does not appear in all the photos of the girl, which is not quite credible. Is the restaurateur lying? Moreover, people who make restaurants may have refrigerators or skills in picking out the flesh and bones, which has the ability to make some people feel a certain suspicion.
4. Human trafficking gangs
The site of the accident is about six miles from the Costa Rican border. In Costa Rica, trafficking in human beings and even human organs is rampant. The owner of the commissary under the mountain once testified that he had seen the girls go down the mountain. Well, it is possible that the girls went down the mountain and went to play somewhere else, but were controlled by a criminal gang and eventually kidnapped or held hostage in the mountains, and for some reason, the criminal gang killed the girls.
There was a photograph of girls with local youth in the middle of a lake (not too far from the pianist trail where the girls were hiking, not too far away). However, because the photo is too blurry, it is impossible to accurately identify whether the girls in the photo are Chrissy and Lisana.
In this photo, the girls resemble Chrissy and Lisana.
Even more bizarre is the fact that both the photographer of the photo and the taxi driver who took the girl from the homestay to the pianist's trail at the time died mysteriously within a year or so of the girl's disappearance, seemingly suspected of criminal gang retaliation or destruction of evidence.
The reason why we call the above statements "speculation" is because until now, these statements have no strong evidence to support, so they can only stay in the stage of speculation and speculation.
At present, although the tragedy of Chrissy and Lisana has alarmed the world, many people have privately identified and analyzed photos and other relics, and some people have teamed up to survey and investigate the accident site in Panama, but no one has found the most effective conclusion about the cause of the girls' deaths. The accident theory and the murder theory also have their own reasoning logic, and they also have their own logical contradictions.
The Panamanian government's refusal to release all the photos and refusal to reopen investigations into the case has left speculation rife.
According to local legend, the mournful cries of the girls could be heard in the valley on a pitch-black night. Of course, legends are legends after all, and we hope that heaven can stimulate new insiders or people's technological developments to find new evidence, and this suspicious case can restart the investigation, so that the girls will not be wronged and lonely.