Issues with the time settings, mobile connections and witnesses
Conflicting times of witnesses
Now some paragraphs will follow about the conflicting times and the Old versus the New timeline. I will summarize the most important info and analyze things further. Of course you can skip this subchapter and go to the last chapter of this blog part 1 now. A private investigator interviewed everyone living on the Pianista trail in the days following April 1st and came up with different eyewitness statements. Almost everyone claims to have seen Kris and Lisanne either get out of a taxi, walk up or around the Pianista trail on April 1st or come down again from the Pianista trail. Most witnesses mention the time window of 14:00-16:00 PM. Which matches with the statement of the (now dead) taxi driver, who declared that he picked Kris and Lisanne up around 13:30 PM and dropped them off at the start of the trail around 13:45 PM. So the old timeline. A witness also confirmed to have seen the girls waiting for the taxi at the side of the road close to 13:30 PM. But note that none of the witnesses support the times of the EXIF data of the photos. Nobody has claimed to have seen Kris and Lisanne on the Pianista trail at or around 11:00 AM. People only claimed to have seen them later in the afternoon. This is puzzling. Just like it is strange that none of the witnesses correctly described the clothes which Kris and Lisanne worn on that day. All the witnesses testified to investigators under oath that they had seen Kris and Lisanne after being shown photos of them.
LOCAL WITNESS MARU
Ingrid Lommers reported that a woman named Maru saw the girls on the main road outside of the trail on April 1st at 13:30 PM. Maru also wrote on local Boquete Lee Zeltzer's blog on April 7, 2014 at 11:39 AM: "I saw the same girls minutes before walking by Il Pianista and yes, they looked pretty tired and sweaty." Although some other witnesses also thought they saw them much later that day.
Pedro, owner of hostel Casa Pedro, claims that he saw the women on 1 April around 14:00-14:30 PM in front of his hostel. They asked him about the Pianista trail and he told them about the Piedra de Lino trail, which starts right next to his place. Kris and Lisanne attempted the hike he claimed, and he saw them return in 15 minutes. He asked them if they hiked the trail already, but thinks they lied to him because he knows how long it takes to hike that trail (45 minutes). He then told the reporter they looked like they were confused in his opinion. Pedro's neighbour Leonidas C. also clearly recognized Kris and Lisanne in front of Casa Pedro and on the Piedra de Lino Trail, according to his statements to the police. According to different witnesses, Kris and Lisanne were seen walking and sweating around this point. Pedro also said that he told Kris and Lisanne where to catch a taxi back to Boquete. Pedro told Ingrid Lommers later that he had the strong impression that after the small hike, Kris and Lisanne were so tired that they wanted to go back to Boquete. They sat down on the floor on the side of his house, saying that they did not want to go to El Pianista anymore, but rather to town. They sat there for a while and Pedro did not see how they left and in what direction. It must have been about 15:00 at least. We have no description from Pedro of what Kris and Lisanne looked like that day, possibly because nobody asked him. So we are not sure if it was them, but it were definitely two girls, very young, one taller than the other one according to Pedro, with a black backpack, speaking English, but not native English. They came there with a taxi first of all, asking for the Pianista trail, he insisted.
GIOVANNI S. FROM IL PIANISTA RESTAURANT
Giovanni S. (49) saw the women on 1 April between 15:00 and 15:30 PM near Don Pedro, hitching toward Il Pianista. Lee Zeltzer had a word with one of the volunteers searching for the two missing Dutch women in Boquete. "Phil [..] said the owner of Il Pianista, Giovanni, had spoken to the women on April 1 and told them where to catch a bus back to Boquete." Giovanni's wife Doris confirmed they were Blues owners and that her husband saw the girls. She also said that Kris and Lisanne talked shortly with Giovanni at the start of their walk. She also said: Giovanni saw the women on 1 April near Don Pedro hitching toward Il Pianista. Blue went with them. No one can remember seeing them return. Blue did return however and Doris believes because of the hour they could not have gone far. She and Giovanni believe that they did return or the dog would have stayed with them. Giovanni S. also told investigator Martin Ferrara on April 6th that he spotted Kris and Lisanne a third time when they came down the Pianista trail ("exhausted") later and friendly greeted restaurant employee Xiomara P. who was finishing work at this time.AN EMPLOYER OF IL PIANISTA RESTAURANT
An employee of his Il Pianista restaurant saw them start-up the trail between 15:00 and 15:30 PM on April 1st. Blue their dog, who often follows hikers went with them it was claimed. [It is not sure if this employee is again Xiomara P. or perhaps pandilla member and friend of Henry, Sam John Downer].
SHOP OWNER FRANK ABDIEL ROSAS
Shop owner Frank Abdiel Rosas, who runs a grocery store on the side of the road near the entrance to the "Piedra de Lino" and "El Pianista" trails, declared to the Panamanian media that he and his wife Ericka S. saw the girls pass by around 14:30-15:00 PM on Tuesday April 1st. This was in front of their grocery store Nellita, 270 meters from Casa Pedro. He added that Lisanne was looking sickly: "I had customers in the shop at that moment. I saw the chunkiest of the two girls wore black lycra, and I saw them walking in that direction. I saw them turnaround one more time from my shop, and then I didn’t see them anymore. But they looked tired. Like they had already walked a fair bit." Black lycra.. We know she did not wear black lycra on Tuesday April 1st, but maybe that is what Kris actually wore on Monday, and that's the day they also went to the Pianista area for an exploring visit? Frank said he thought the girls took a taxi back to Boquete, but he did not know this for sure, they could have also walked back to Boquete. HOSTEL OWNER JOSÉ MORALES
Local hostel owner Jose Morales has stated to investigator Martin Ferrara on April 6th that he spoke with the girls on April 1st in the late afternoon, when he supposedly saw them make their way back down from the mountain, and spoke to him again, asking his advice on how to get back to Boquete. He said that they looked tired and hungry and that he advised them to take a taxi, but that he didn't see whether they actually did or not, or what way they went after that.
LOCAL RESIDENT OLIVA DE KAMLocal witness Oliva de Kam, who lives with her husband Dario at the start of the Pianista trail, also saw the girls on the Pianista trail and talked about the time of 16:15 PM. Husband Dario de Kam told investigators in an interview on April 16th that the couple saw Kris and Lisanne walking up the Pianista trail past their house toward the Mirador between 15:45 and 16:00 PM. Oliva declared to a local reporter: "I only saw them for a few seconds. They were quiet. Then I was struck by the short pants they wore and the amount of bare legs. They will get sunburn that way without skin protection, I thought. And I thought about how they were going to get scratches on their legs once they got up." [In another translation Oliva actually seems to say that she worried that they would get cold up the mountain, in those short pants]. She also declared to the media that she warned the girls not to go up the mountain alone anymore, but that she didn't think they spoke Spanish, and she herself speaks no English, so they may not have understood her. She added that the girls wore shorts and were clearly not dressed for this path. “And if they would have spoken the language, I would have said something to them; that it was far too late to go up that hill at that time of day. It was very cloudy that day and then it can get dark sooner than normal. It was far too late in the day. And they were going alone up the mountain. And it would get dark sooner than normal, due to the ugly weather. And I told my husband this. And the next day we found out that they were missing and we were questioned about what we saw.” [Who questioned them and when exactly?] It was not cloudy that day also... “I noticed that one of the girls wore a very short pants. And I noticed that they weren’t dressed right for the mountains, because it gets cold quickly and then your legs will start to hurt with such shorts.”
LOCAL RESIDENT MERCEDES MIRANDA
Mercedes Miranda, who also lives along the Pianista trail, declared on camera that he remembers Kris and Lisanne walking past his house. "What they had told us is that they had entered at 4 in the afternoon. But up there, Mr. Lázaro says that they were sitting and resting, and from that moment they disappeared from his sight." Mercedes recalled the dangers of the trail, stating that there are all sorts of animals. Mainly snakes, but he also mentions tigers and mountain pigs.
LOCAL RESIDENT MARTINA
Then there is a witness called Martina, who lives halfway up the Pianista Trail also. She was working in her garden when she saw Kris and Lisanne pass by, walking up the mountain, on Tuesday April 1st around 16:00 PM. "I only saw their faces. They walked by. I didn’t think much of it because this is a touristic trail and many people walk by. They were alone." And within 3 days tour guide F. came by to ask her about what she saw, while he went up to look for the girls. She said about this: “And within three days tour guide Feliciano G. walked past my garden. He pulled my shirt and that is when I knew that it were those two girls who were missing.” Martina, who is a Ngöbe native, claims that she realised saw the girls pass by, because she recognized them in a photo that the guide F. showed her on the third day of their disappearance. She later said to the interviewer of Telemetro that she did not see anything, when asked about the women. Update: And in a podcast series that aired in the fall of 2022, Jeremy Kryt and Mariana Atencio went to Boquete and interviewed Martina as well. To them she stated that she did see Kris and Lisanne going up the trail, and that she never thought they would disappear after that. When asked what she believes has happened to them, she answered that 'there was definitely someone who killed them'. She doesn't know who, but that it definitely was not due to the river that they died. And that it is all government lies, to say they drowned in the river. She says that right after the girls got lost, a man - a local guide, Feliciano - essentially told her to shut up about this case and not talk to anyone about the fact that she had seen the Dutch girls. You can hear about this in episode 1 of 7 here. Jeremy Kryt and Mariana Atencio state that Martina is afraid of the guide and that he threatened her with jailtime 'for telling the truth'. She is visibly shaking and asks the two journalists to protect her. 
LOCAL GUIDE PLINIO
Local guide Plinio also stated to have passed what he thought were the girls on the Pianista trail, but he recalled to have seen them around midday. He stated that the two women said "Good morning", but he wasn't sure it were Kris and Lisanne as 'all Europeans look alike' apparently: "Sorry but you all look alike: tall, white, light hair and the same type of clothes. And always moving in duo's." He supposedly withdrew his statement with police later on. Plinio did say that he spoke with local resident Lazaro on his way back. Guide P. also partook in the searches by the way and posted photos on his social media of the same Mirador spot where Kris and Lisanne took their selfies. 
LOCAL RESIDENT LAZARO
Lazaro lives further up the trail in the last inhibited hut on the Boquete side of the Pianista trail. He declares that he saw the girls for just a moment resting at the shack, before they continued their ascent up the Pianista trail at 16:00 PM. He also did not see them return. Lazaro also voluntarily talked with police about a statement from his direct employee Keni G. who claims to have seen two young women in shorts wandering around the Pianista summit on April 2nd, near the terrain of local "Mister M." (possible Mercedes Miranda?), while being followed by a tattooed man with a cell phone. He never saw them again. Nothing came from this intel given to police.LOCAL RESIDENT LORENZO G.
Lorenzo G. lives along the Pianista trail. In this local news item, Lorenzo G. is interviewed about the disappearance of Kris and Lisanne, and the reporter states: "Lorenzo knows all the trails around Boquete and is the last witness who saw the girls." Then Lorenzo himself says on camera: "Yes I did see them, but really from a distance. I saw that they ascended la Pianista." So it seems likely that Kris and Lisanne passed his place therefore, and that's where he saw them passing by. It may not be directly on the trail, I don't know. Maybe you need to make a small detour for it? It is very close to the trail in any case. A sleuth named Fickle_Return_4860 discovered in this hiking video from 2020, in the second part of the video, what Lorenzo's place looks like on the inside. The female tourist and her male pal are hiking the Pianista trail and stop along the trail for a chat with Lorenzo. They are invited in on their return, and the female videotapes things. At the end of the video she shares some footage from inside his house (looks like a finca perhaps). Behind the man is a wooden box with a visible cloth in it, which Fickle_Return_4860 points out is looking similar in pattern to Kris' shirt, which was never found. I zoomed in on the grayish fabric next to it, but cannot make out if the red and white cloth is lying in between the gray, or is part of the same piece of fabric. It must be a coincidence (perhaps this is an army style piece of fabric), as it would be bizarre to have the actual t-shirt lying around like that, so long after the fact. It would look different also after six years. Besides, dogs scoured the trail and the shrubs around it for a scent, back in 2014, and they would have no doubt barked when passing this house if anything belonging to the girls had been in there. It is more likely a dog pillow with the same pattern, or a cleaning towel, or a dishcloth. And why would anyone keep that t-shirt lying around anyway, if it is the shirt of Kris? Not all too likely, so probably just an army blanket with some red and white stripes in parts.
ANONYMOUS SOURCE
An anonymous male source from the village 'Altos de Romero' (Alto Romero?) told La Estrella newspaper that an attempt was made in this village to kidnap the girls to a house in the vicinity.
TAXI DRIVER LEONARDO MASTINU
Leonardo Arturo Gonzalez Mastinu came forward as the taxi driver who picked Kris and Lisanne up on April 1st at 13:30 PM in Alto Boquete, near the language school near the language school and who dropped them off around 13:40 at the start of the Pianista trail. He said to have pointed them to the Italian Il Pianista restaurant, indicating them where the trail started. These times don't match with the time on the camera however, which places them already at the top of the Pianista around 13:00. Leonardo claimed that when the girls got in the taxi, there were already two other men inside the car. They heard the girls tell the taxi driver where they wanted to go. One of them told him in Spanish: "A la entrada del Pianista." After that, the other two Panamese passengers were dropped off first at their destination and then the taxi driver brought the girls to the start of the El Pianista shortly after. Witnesses have stated that they saw the two young women get out of the taxi at this point. After paying Leonardo 5 dollars the girls asked him where the trail begins exactly and the taxi driver gave them some instructions. A journalist tried to contact Leonardo in the end of May 2014, in vain. She wrote: "It is worth mentioning that we wanted to contact the only person who saw them alive for the last time, we are talking about the taxi driver who left them on the path of the pianist, in addition to being the only one who affirms that the Dutch entered the path. He told us by phone that he used to do it before because he was a taxi driver, but that he already got another job and it would affect him if he gave statements. Unofficially we were informed that he could be called to testify in the coming weeks." The taxi driver turned up dead almost exactly a year later, on March 2nd 2015 (see his gravestone here), under officially “unexplained” circumstances. Leonardo Arturo Gonzalez Mastinu (34) drowned, apparently in shallow water. In this news article, it is written that Leonardo Arturo González was at the time "investigated for having transferred the Dutch Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers to the Sendero El Pianista". The article ends that with the 'inexplicable' death of Leonardo "the number of victims of drowning increased already to four for the year 2015 in Chiriquí." Leonardo also mentioned by the way that Kris had red hair. 
TAXI DRIVER HUMBERTO G.
Humberto G. also came forward as the taxi driver who picked Kris and Lisanne up. He worked for taxi company Transbusa. He declared in an early stage of the investigation to Sinaproc and the police, on April 8th 2014, that he picked up two European girls (believed to be Kris and Lisanne) at the Bruña supermarket. He said he did so between 13:15 and 13:45 PM. He drove them to the start of the Pianista trail, where they said they wanted to go. However, he wasn't talking about April 1st, but about March 31st. So we have two testimonies from two taxi drivers, and they both said to have driven Kris and Lisanne to the Pianista trail around 13:15, but on different days. And neither testimonies match the timeline of the police and Prosecutor. RADIO INTERVIEW WITNESS
In this radio interview, someone saw Kris and Lisanne go up the Pianista trail at 15:30 PM.
MIRIAM'S NEIGHBOUR VERÓNICA
Hardinghaus and Nenner present a new witness. "Miriam's neighbor Verónica is one of the few people who saw Kris and Lisanne on the day they disappeared. She tells us that she is certain that the girls were not wearing the same clothes as in the photos when she saw them leave Miriam's house at around 9:00 a.m. on April 1. She also talks about Lisanne's eye-catching three-quarter pants and Kris's white top. "They were both so striking, though," she tells us. "A lot of people must have noticed them." Verónica, who had already spoken to Kris and Lisanne in the previous days, doesn't believe that they had intended to hike the Pianista Trail. "The last time we met, I invited them to my party, and they wanted to come over in the afternoon. I remember all that pretty clearly because it was my birthday on April 1st. [..] In addition, Miriam's son Amilcar describes in his police statement that both girls often wore "jircas", by which he means tight-fitting, three-quarter pants."
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Local Police also told Ingrid Lommers that they had CCTV video footage, showing the girls in Boquete shortly after 11:00 PM on April 1st. It is also reported in this Dutch newspaper that police confirmed that the girls have been caught on CCTV camera in Boquete, nearby a supermarket and shortly before they started their hike: "The girls have been captured on CCTV video in the center of Boquete, nearby a supermarket, shortly before their disappearance, says Ingrid Lommers. She was told this today by local police." Similar images must exist of their visit to the local pharmacy, although the camera images of them in a local supermarket have since been erased (overwritten) according to police. This must have happened despite police being aware of its existence, and before the footage could be inspected or released. Which could have been important for us, as there is still debate about whether or not their digital camera times were correct, or the time of the witness statements. I find this strange: CCTV footage is available, police know about it and have communicated about this with others, yet when they want to collect the footage it is already gone? Bewildering. The entire timetable depends on how late exactly they started their hike. Interestingly enough, none of this is documented in the case files by investigators. Nothing can be found in the case or police files about the overwritten CCTV footage, or even about police initially informing Ingrid that Kris and Lisanne were captured on video at the supermarket... Sloppy? Nothing was ever heard again from that CCTV video footage. This is one of the many sore thumb points in this investigation. Same for reports that Kris and Lisanne were seen in a local pharmacy. It is strange because you'd think there would be security camera footage or CCTV points in Boquete center, but nothing ever came up. It would have been VERY interesting to see what Kris and Lisanne looked like and were dressed in on the day of their disappearance. Or the day prior. Maybe that could have helped untangle the many conflicting witness statements from various people who claim to have seen them on the Pianista trail. So all in all: shoddy investigation, or maybe some footage was 'made' to disappear? We don't know..
CALISTA HART
Calista Hart wrote this about the girls' disappearance in her blog: "In April my Spanish teacher told me that two young women had gone missing from the sister school in Boquete, Panama. They had left all of their belongings, and not told anyone where they were going that day. The last anyone saw of them they were talking to two strange men, making plans to see the waterfall."
ALTO ROMERO WITNESS
La Estrella reported about a person from Alto Romero who reported that villagers tried to take the girls into a house. This house was in Alto Romero, the same location where the backpack was found and in which vicinity the bone remains were found.
La Estrella reported about a person from Alto Romero who reported that villagers tried to take the girls into a house. This house was in Alto Romero, the same location where the backpack was found and in which vicinity the bone remains were found.
THE RED TRUCK WITNESS
In the Dutch press, locals were quoted who saw a red truck in the afternoon of April 1st and around the time the girls should have been on their way back. "Witnesses living on the trail saw a red terrain car coming off the Pianista Trail; a pick-up type with large wheels, possibly a Mitsubishi with a double cabin or a Toyota Highlander." These witnesses had also seen the girls heading up the trail around 14:30 PM, but never saw them come down again. Instead, they saw this red pick-up come down the mountain at the end of the afternoon. And this local reporter on the scene also mentions here that there are at least two testimonies he knows of people who declare they saw an off-road vehicle come down the mountain when the girls were hiking there. Investigators made notes of this sighting, but did not follow up on the leads consistently. You can read much more about the Red Truck mystery and ins and outs in this previous blog post of mine, under the subheading "*Other claims; The Red Truck".
FRENCH TOURISTS HEAR ABOUT SCREAMS
Two French tourists wrote about screams followed by a loud bang on April 5th. This was on the Quetzal trail, which is west of the Pianista Trail and it was actually German tourist Marcus who had that frightful experience the previous evening. The French tourists were told about his experience. "At the guardhouse, we meet a guy who, the day before, heard frightened screams from two girls, then a loud crash, and then saw three guys on the trail. This explains the presence today of many cops and rescuers on the trail in search of the girls."
In the Dutch press, locals were quoted who saw a red truck in the afternoon of April 1st and around the time the girls should have been on their way back. "Witnesses living on the trail saw a red terrain car coming off the Pianista Trail; a pick-up type with large wheels, possibly a Mitsubishi with a double cabin or a Toyota Highlander." These witnesses had also seen the girls heading up the trail around 14:30 PM, but never saw them come down again. Instead, they saw this red pick-up come down the mountain at the end of the afternoon. And this local reporter on the scene also mentions here that there are at least two testimonies he knows of people who declare they saw an off-road vehicle come down the mountain when the girls were hiking there. Investigators made notes of this sighting, but did not follow up on the leads consistently. You can read much more about the Red Truck mystery and ins and outs in this previous blog post of mine, under the subheading "*Other claims; The Red Truck".
FRENCH TOURISTS HEAR ABOUT SCREAMS
Two French tourists wrote about screams followed by a loud bang on April 5th. This was on the Quetzal trail, which is west of the Pianista Trail and it was actually German tourist Marcus who had that frightful experience the previous evening. The French tourists were told about his experience. "At the guardhouse, we meet a guy who, the day before, heard frightened screams from two girls, then a loud crash, and then saw three guys on the trail. This explains the presence today of many cops and rescuers on the trail in search of the girls."
MARCUS HEARD THOSE SCREAMS
The statement came from German tourist Marcus M, who claimed to a local forest ranger at a control station that he witnessed that Kris and Lisanne had been beaten and thrown down a ravine. This may coincide more or less with the information the two French tourists had given and they probably met Marcus and wrote about him on their blog. Marcus had arrived in Boquete on April 4th and this event had taken place on April 5th he claimed, at Cerro Punta at the Quetzal Trail. He claimed to have heard a female voice screaming for help, followed by a loud bang. He then witnessed two men crouching and hiding in the bushes, after which he ran away in fear. Senafront did visit the spot in the evening and searched for the women, but they found nothing (aside from the German tourists own plastic water bottle, proving that he actually was on the scene, as he had claimed). - You can read in more detail about all these witness statements in one of my previous blog posts, here.
The statement came from German tourist Marcus M, who claimed to a local forest ranger at a control station that he witnessed that Kris and Lisanne had been beaten and thrown down a ravine. This may coincide more or less with the information the two French tourists had given and they probably met Marcus and wrote about him on their blog. Marcus had arrived in Boquete on April 4th and this event had taken place on April 5th he claimed, at Cerro Punta at the Quetzal Trail. He claimed to have heard a female voice screaming for help, followed by a loud bang. He then witnessed two men crouching and hiding in the bushes, after which he ran away in fear. Senafront did visit the spot in the evening and searched for the women, but they found nothing (aside from the German tourists own plastic water bottle, proving that he actually was on the scene, as he had claimed). - You can read in more detail about all these witness statements in one of my previous blog posts, here.
Photo source credit: the BackpackerCoach
SO LOOKING BACK..
I hold onto the Leonardo statement because it was so detailed. And because he contacted police himself, and because his detailed testimony was allowed to be covered in the media, and because it also ended up in the police files. There was so much detail in fact, that it should have been a piece of cake to verify his testimony for police. There may have been cameras along some of the roads he crossed at that time. Cabs also tend to keep detailed info logs of when and where they pick people up. They speak over the (porto)phone with colleagues or employers. All of that should have been checked and verified. Leonardo was on the phone most of the drive he stated, and that could have been verified too of course. Same for the route his mobile phone followed at that specific time. C'mon... why haven't these things been verified and publicized? And there were also two other gentlemen in the car. Just because their names never made it into the press and in fact neither into the case files (!), does not mean that Leonardo didn't know who these two men were. Boquete is a small town. It is surprising that police never mentioned their identities in the case files. Because at the very least, those two men are witnesses of Kris and Lisanne's last known movements. Who were these men? Where did they get out of the cab exactly? Where did they go to? Did they speak with Kris and Lisanne before embarking from the cab or after? Or did Leonardo (RIP) make it all up? If so, why? I don't understand why there never was any more investigation done into and information published about all this. Especially since the phone log info contradicted Leonardo's timeline: at 10 AM Kris and Lisanne were using public Wi-Fi. Again, we don't know where (zzzzzzzzz) because that is not written down in the case files. One set of authors suggests that the Wi-Fi at Spanish by the River was used here for the last time by Kris and Lisanne, while another set of authors claims without providing any evidence that it was in fact in restaurant Nelvis. I still scratch my head about these completely conflicting data. Leonardo ending up dead, drowned, like some others named in this case.. The phone data indicating that Leonardo must have been hours off when it came to the time he provided police for his contact with Kris and Lisanne.. Would a taxi driver really not have good memory of such a thing? All they do is sticking to time schedules. I'm honestly not even 100% sure about the authenticity of the phone logs. In light of the proven and admitted messing about of Pitti and her team with the night photo's before the NFI could view the real photo originals, anything is possible in theory. That blew that door wide open for me with their night photo manipulation.
I also (again) add a video of school owner Ingrid Lommers declaring on Dutch TV that her staff saw Kris and Lisanne leave the Spanish language school on April 1st shortly after 13:00 PM
Ingrid said on camera here: "The last moment that they were seen by a female teacher here was really 13:10 PM; an employer of us in the office also saw them walk away then." And this is strange because by that time their camera data placed them on the top of the Pianista trail. Why Ingrid was so adamant about Kris and Lisanne leaving on April 1st at 13:00 PM is beyond me. She only relayed second hand information, but this bothers me till this day! I just cannot make sense of her initial confident statement. And it wasn't declared by one, but by two staff members. The declaration from Eileen ended up in the police files and she gave that testimony already on April 7th 2014. So with fresh memory still. I still don't even understand who that second staff member could have been, considering only Eileen was present that Tuesday according to the case files. But Ingrid hammered this message down for weeks, also on her facebook page and on camera. This is what cemented the Old Timeline in the months before the backpack and camera and phones were found. Guide F. has stated in an interview that he joined Eileen to the police office that Wednesday evening, because she doesn't speak Spanish. So Eileen wasn't there at Spanish by the River to take over Spanish classes. She was there to man the desk, as a young volunteer intern. And if Marjolein was supposed to be the one to teach Spanish, then why did she leave for Costa Rica on Tuesday morning? To join Ingrid Lommers in one of her other Spanish schools (she has a cluster of them in Bocas, Boquete and two schools in Costa Rica). A blogger called Nickie wrote about her stay in Boquete just a week before Kris and Lisanne arrived there. And about her classes at Spanish by the River. Mere days before the arrival of Kris and Lisanne, there were many students present at SbtR. Yet we know nothing about the Monday and Tuesday when Kris and Lisanne were there. From the case files it seems they were as good as alone. No Spanish classes and no fellow students. I don't think that Ingrid and Marjolein have anything to do with the tragic ending of Kris and Lisanne. Sure, the volunteer work could have been arranged better. But ultimately, these two Dutch women were not even in Boquete when Kris and Lisanne decided to go for a hike and to go against the school's advice to book a tour guide for this. But... I don't understand why Ingrid and Marjolein were never really questioned, publicly. We still know virtually nothing about what went wrong there. And what kickstarted the beginning of the end for Kris and Lisanne. The parents of Kris and Lisanne confirmed on live TV that Ingrid had sent a confirmation email about this on Friday, as Lisanne was a nervous type who wanted everything to be well arranged and cemented before arriving. She got the confirmation in writing that the volunteer work had been arranged for them and that they would start on Monday and.... it all fell through. Was Ingrid bullshitting her on Friday? Was Maria Elena an unreliable liar? Or did something else happen? We don't know, as nobody ever questioned this publicly.
It is disappointing though that we never really heard or read anything about her statements about those pivotal first days in Boquete, after the realisation set in that Kris and Lisanne were missing. It's not like she was someone completely on the side-line in this whole saga. She didn't just see Kris and Lisanne fleetingly. She met them already in Bocas del Toro, she made their appointments with guide F. supposedly, she saw them at SbtR on various days. She planned to do a guided tour with them on Wednesday, she says. She joined guide F. on the morning of April 2nd to visit the girls' bedroom. Going through their personal belongings before even the police could do so. She spent a good half hour inside their room. She spent part of the afternoon with F. by many accounts (although the pair of them give ever differing accounts of this also, in good style). Either joining him in his jungle coffee farm, or by another account going to a strawberry farm with him, before going to the police in the evening. And in another statement they claim that they both went their own ways that afternoon and only reunited at the police station.. Why does almost everything guide F. in particular says has to come in threes? Always three different versions of events and these are rotated depending on which journalist he speaks to. Or so it seems. Eileen seems to do the same thing. Eileen was (understandably) in a state of panic and upset that Wednesday evening. She left Boquete already within one week, despite intending to stay in Boquete at least two weeks. Afterwards she is said to have told some people on a Dutch forum that she left because she was afraid, or uncomfortable at the very least. That she wanted to leave Boquete right away. You'd think that this episode made an impact and that Eileen has been overthinking it to the same extent as us outsiders. And that she would at least remember when she last saw Kris and Lisanne before they vanished..
But clearly not, because just like guide F., Eileen has told different stories and recollections to different people over time. Same for her recollections about whether or not she told the tour guide about seeing Kris and Lisanne look up the Pianista trail or not. Local Boquete resident and interviewer Lee Zeltzer noted down the following from Eileen on April 4, 2014: "I spoke with Eileen at Spanish by the River in Boquete who confirmed that the girls are missing. That they told no one where they were going but they think from brochures and the internet sites they are reading they were heading toward the Quetzal trail or someplace in that region of the mountains. For those not familiar with the area that is a very remote mountainous area north of the pueblo." Similarly, it now turns out that during a police interview mere days after the disappearance (when her memory was still super sharp), Eileen W. actually told them that she did last see Kris and Lisanne at SbtR around 13:00 PM on Tuesday. And that is how Ingrid Lommers knew this detail, and this is why she told it on social media and on Dutch TV at the time. Here Ingrid states in this news video that the girls were seen in the school in Boquete on April 1st: "The last moment that they were seen by a female teacher here was really 13:10; an employer of us in the office also saw them walk away then." So this disappearance was a major event there, right from the start. The police would have asked her the same thing as well: when was the last time that you saw Kris and Lisanne at the school? Maybe she was stressed and didn't memorize it well later on. Or perhaps Eileen has long moved on from this stressful period. But we are dealing with many inconsistencies still.
But what if Kris and Lisanne really were last seen in the school on Monday?
We discussed this on a Dutch forum, FOK, and wondered what the implications could be IF it is true what Eileen initially answered. What if Kris and Lisanne never visited the language school on April 1st, before heading up the Pianista trail, but instead went to the language school on March 31st at the latest? Juan emphasized that the Dutch forensic (NFI) report indeed mentions March 31st as the day that the last Wi-Fi contact was made positively there by the phones of the girls. At 16:44 to be more precise. We know from the case files that Lisanne's Samsung phone last made a connection with an unspecified Wi-Fi at 10:10 on April 1st, the day they went missing. But we can only guess that this was also at the Spanish language school. But that was not further specified. If they weren't checking out info on the Pianista Trail and weren't making last moment decisions on April 1st in the language school, then it would also be theoretically possible that Kris and Lisanne in fact climbed the Pianista Trail on March 31st. A far-fetched, unlikely and normally discarded theory, but don't forget that we have the witness statement from taxi driver Humberto. The witness statement from Pedro Capon of Casa Pedro may be correct in time and event, but one day off in date? What if he saw them walking to the beginning of the trail on March 31st. That we have a few afternoon hours on Monday where Kris and Lisanne are unaccounted for and when their phones do not log into specific Wi-Fi locations. They had no work obligations that afternoon and were disappointed. They went and did something. We just don't know what. My guess is that they went to the Caldera for a swim (the swimming photo theory). But we are also burdened with a pile of witness statements, which simply cannot all be true. Maybe Kris and Lisanne did a 'test drive' that Monday afternoon? Had Humberto drop them off at the trailhead and then wandered around a bit aimlessly. Opting to climb the Piedra de Lino instead when Pedro and Giovanni advised them to do that instead of the Pianista? Only for them to return to the Pianista on Tuesday April 2nd with taxi driver Leonardo. And if Kris and Lisanne in fact walked the Pianista trail already on March 31st, then that could perhaps also explain Lisanne's breathing issues that evening, according to host family mother Miriam. But then we have to wonder; why wasn't the hike described or mentioned in their diaries? Nor told about to their families or masseuse Sigrid? Difficult... 
The authors Hardinghaus and Nenner confirmed in 2024 that after reading all the case files, they still have no idea which two teachers Ingrid was referring to here. They say that Marjolein (aged 30 at the time) was not a teacher there but that she helped run Spanish by the River. The school used local Spanish teachers for the Spanish lessons they offered. But the authors state that Kris and Lisanne did not follow English classes in Boquete, like they did in Bocas del Torro. "Petra was the only pupil, but she was never questioned by the police, as she told us. Which is also very difficult to understand. So it could have been Petra's teacher, but she doesn't appear in the files and we couldn't contact her either. But there were also other employees that Ingrid could have been referring to. As this was only a statement made by Ingrid to the public, we can't do anything about it or speculate. So this information remains in the dark." Only blown-in intern Eileen was manning the desk. But Eileen booked herself and Kris and Lisanne a day tour trip with Feliciano for the Wednesday?? So who was present in the school then in her place? Again, we have no idea. For Marjolein to leave Boquete without arranging any replacement work for Kris and Lisanne, and just leaving it to Eileen, who frankly knew nobody, knew nothing and who spoke as good as no Spanish. There clearly was no fervent effort made to provide these girls with safe replacement work and this could be called awful hosting of two innocent and inexperienced fellow Dutchies. It is just horrifying, given how it all snowballed into the demise of Kris and Lisanne. With Kris and Lisanne to vanish on the Tuesday... with no teacher of authority present to even oversee what happened in the school when guide F. came round to see if he could sell them some tours? Some would call all that a failure in their duty of care to their clients.
Then there is an early interview with Lisanne Froon's brother Martijn and her uncle Jan Slagter, who is a former cop
It dates from April 28th, 2014. You can see it translated by me here. Martijn has just returned from Boquete himself at that point, and walked up the Pianista trail and the side trail, Piedra de Lino that starts next to the hostel from Pedro. Martijn recalls in the TV interview about this: When you take this trail, it is about 3 to 4 kilometres [from Boquete]. It ascents steeply and there are also a lot of houses situated next to this trail. Then here is Casa del Pedro. This is the last point where they have been actually seen. By someone who talked with them. And we know 100% certain that this is where they were last seen." - "And that was during the day, no strange weather..." "It was around 14:00-14:30 in the afternoon. They wanted to climb the Pianista trail. But they ended up on the wrong part. That's when the man there said: "You can also climb the trail here. Is also nice and it is a shorter route". And it was already later in the afternoon then. You don't have a lot of daylight left. Then they walked up that route [Piedra de Lino] and then descended again 15 minutes later. Because there was road work there. I have walked up there myself and I have also seen that they were working on the road with excavators. You could not walk any further. Then they sat on the pavement there and asked this man what was the fastest way to get back to town. And he told them: that is the same road back down again, with a taxi or on foot. They sat on the side of the road; that man saw them sitting there from his kitchen window, after he gave them this information. Hundred metres from there was a kind of kiosk. He confirmed that he saw Kris walking. A smaller girl with red hair, fitting the description. But from that moment on, nothing is certain anymore." In the below video I collected most of the witness statements that were recorded on camera. Btw: notice how guide F. mentions nothing about any smell of decay, pointing them to the foot and boot behind the tree. He only says that if they hadn't (by chance? impulsively?) looked behind the tree, they wouldn't have found it.
And I repost the below early interview and tour through Boquete by a Dutch journalist and radio maker. He highlights how unclear the directions for the Pianista Trail are, back in 2014. The interviewer, Okke Ornstein, believes that someone gave Kris and Lisanne instructions on how to walk. 'And if so, why didn't that person come forward yet'? Good point. An affluent sounding Dutch lady who lives in Boquete is also interviewed, and she says that at the start of it all, she and some others paid for a private detective who went past all the people who live on the Pianista trail to interview them. "On day two already". Out of loyalty towards the Dutch heritage of the girls, combined with distrust of the local police. She also says that 'everybody knows' that Kris and Lisanne left Spanish by the River around 13:00 PM to put on their hiking shoes and go to the Pianista. I wonder; if that was indeed common knowledge already so early on, thanks to Radio Ingrid and her public reporting, could this have somehow influenced the recollections of the witnesses? Could they consciously or subconsciously have adjusted the time of day when they remembered seeing the girls? The Dutch lady also says that they found out (soon) who the taxi driver was. So he gave his statement really early on as well, making a time recollection error a little bit less likely. But the police weren't all too interested in all the findings of this private detective. And she says it is normal in Boquete that police aren't as thorough as in the Netherlands or the USA for instance.They do not take people in for an interrogation or press them about their alibi and whereabouts. People are expected to go themselves, voluntarily, to the Personeria to do their story. And that's what police more or less waited for. 'And that's how it goes in Panama'. Makes me wonder how many potential witnesses were missed, as a result.
So summarizing, many locals claim to have seen Kris and Lisanne on or near the Pianista trail on Tuesday April 1st. Nobody managed to remember or mention the striking red and white striped top of Kris, or the turquoise top of Lisanne. But overall these witnesses seemed secure in their identification of the two foreign looking European tourists (one very tall, one with striking red hair). Could they have seen two other women instead? I don't believe so. Firstly it is rare for Panamanians to look like Kris and Lisanne. Secondly we know of no tourist couple who resembled Kris and Lisanne and who also walked the Pianista trail that day. This case gained a lot of international media attention and yet, no other people came forward to claim that they were on that same trail that same day and may have been the cause of witness confusion. Or police and investigators would have found them. And for this many witnesses to declare they have seen Kris and Lisanne (basically almost everyone permanently living on the Pianista trail saw them or saw the red truck that day), we are either dealing with people who all truly saw them, or people who en masse have been manipulated to lie about this? Or were otherwise all massively confused about their sightings, like in some communal daze? All hard to believe.
Wrong time stamp
The times are an issue, in every respect. The times mentioned by the witnesses do not match the time found on the photos on the Canon camera and the phones. The witnesses also place Kris and Lisanne in the Pianista region anywhere between 13:45 and 16:00 PM. And it is difficult to weed through multiple witness statements and decide for yourself, without further evidence, which are valid and which are erroneous.. Perhaps it is possible that some witnesses were confused with the afternoon of March 31st, when Kris and Lisanne may have also walked around the area, possibly making a short exploration tour at the start of the Pianista trail. But this is just a theory for which we have no hard evidence; no diary confirmation, no photos. There were no photos taken by Kris and Lisanne on March 31st at all in fact, as far as we know. The girls are said to have posted a facebook update at some point on Monday, announcing that they would walk around Boquete a bit that day (although Boquete is not the same as the Pianista Trail..). This has not been officially confirmed. Could this supposed walk on Monday correlate with hostel owner Pedro's statements about showing them the trail behind his house, making a short tour of about an hour? Even though he stated that this all took place on Tuesday April 1st? Perhaps he had the times/dates mixed up? None of the known witnesses claimed to have seen the girls on Monday March 29th. Everyone said Tuesday the first. Just like they all saw them in the afternoon and not around 11:00 AM. Which does not match with the photos that were later found on the girls' digital camera. This New Timeline was also confirmed by a Dutch investigation team, based on the angle of the sun on the photos of the summit. It would mean that the taxi driver Leonardo must have been either mistaken or lied about his times. As well as the school staff... And all the known witnesses. And no official has ever given any explanation of how the girls would have made it to the Pianista trail in the 11:00 AM starting case. Because no taxi driver has ever claimed to have taken them there that early. Not to police and not in the media. It's a significant walk from their host families place to the start of the Pianista Trail.. They must therefore have taken a cab (or a bus?), allowing them to effectively start their Pianista hike around 11:00 AM (New Timeline). The current consensus is that the Old Timeline with a hiking start around 14:00 PM is incorrect, based also on the photo times and that angle of the sun. So this is the official version of events now. But I feel that despite all that, there is some (little) room for doubt still.
What we do have are two testimonies from two taxi drivers, and neither said to have driven Kris and Lisanne to the Pianista trail on the morning of April 1st. Why did the Real Taxi driver not come forward with a more reliable 10:30 AM pick up time?
Dismissal of the witness statementsOne of the arguments for investigators to dismiss the inconvenient (because not fitting) witness statements, was because they all described the girls' backpack as 'black'. Can you believe they would make such a glaring error? See the backpack in the photo on the right for yourself.... Anyone seeing that pass by from even a few meters of distance could say it was black. At the end of the day, a lot of witness statements were given very early on, but they were mostly all deemed unreliable by the case prosecutor and some of her followers. All the witnesstatements, except for the ones that were convenient to them. Such as that incredible witness who managed to memorize the number plate of a red pickup truck and could lead investigators to a harmless plant and flower transporter. But all the other witnesses were considered unreliable. The same applied to the statements of two taxi drivers, who came forward to claim they transported Kris and Lisanne to the Pianista trailhead. Both give the same time (around 13:15 / 13:30) and one said it was on Tuesday April 1st, the other said it was on Monday March 31st. Neither were therefore believed. But the real taxi driver who drove them there on Tuesday around 10:30? He apparently never came forward. Finding the backpack and the camera was the turning point in this case, that saw all witness statements and intel gathered before June 11th 2014 become null and void.
Wrong time and date settings
But neither the Canon digital camera nor iPhone from Kris were set to the correct local time. Lisanne's Samsung phone did have its date and time adjusted correctly to local Panamanian time. The digital Canon camera was set to 2013 instead of 2014 and also displayed a 6 hour time difference with local time in Panama, even though there was a 7 hours time difference between the Netherlands and Panama at that time. Dutch forensic investigators claimed to have been able to detect the correct time on a pictured wristwatch and could compare it with the recorded camera time. The date and time had to be changed manually and Kris and Lisanne seem to not have done so. They also didn't adjust the time of their digital camera manually when the European summer time started on March 30th. This does not seem strange in itself: Kris and Lisanne used their digital Canon camera in a straightforward manner. No settings were changed throughout their entire Panama stay, not even the zoom function was used. They just clicked away without changing the factory settings. The last daytime photo #508 for instance has the official time stamp of 19:54, 2013. Investigators recalculated that time to 13:54 of 2014.
Sun angle
Investigators also looked at the angle of the sun in the photographs from the girls for verification.
But neither the Canon digital camera nor iPhone from Kris were set to the correct local time. Lisanne's Samsung phone did have its date and time adjusted correctly to local Panamanian time. The digital Canon camera was set to 2013 instead of 2014 and also displayed a 6 hour time difference with local time in Panama, even though there was a 7 hours time difference between the Netherlands and Panama at that time. Dutch forensic investigators claimed to have been able to detect the correct time on a pictured wristwatch and could compare it with the recorded camera time. The date and time had to be changed manually and Kris and Lisanne seem to not have done so. They also didn't adjust the time of their digital camera manually when the European summer time started on March 30th. This does not seem strange in itself: Kris and Lisanne used their digital Canon camera in a straightforward manner. No settings were changed throughout their entire Panama stay, not even the zoom function was used. They just clicked away without changing the factory settings. The last daytime photo #508 for instance has the official time stamp of 19:54, 2013. Investigators recalculated that time to 13:54 of 2014.
Sun angle
Investigators also looked at the angle of the sun in the photographs from the girls for verification.
When specific online software is used to determine the time of day with the help of shadows in photo (sites such as this one), then it indicates (when adding all the right data for April 1st 2014 in Panama) that the pre-summit photos were taken between 11:00 and 11:30 AM. This indicates that the times on the camera were, in fact, correct. I am not sure just how reliable such sites are, but the Dutch forensic specialists of the NFI also put one person on this matter, who also believes the Pianista photos and the sun and shadow patterns in them indicate an 11 AM start. But with the special light there in Panama near the equator I am still not 100% convinced that those computer-generated time estimations are correct. Sure, maybe 98% sure, but there is still room for error. Since nobody actually went there on an April 1st to recreate the photos at exactly the same time of day and with the same meteorological conditions to see if the sun angle matches the photos or not. Other people believe that the digital photo data was meddled with. When they look at the summit photos of Lisanne for instance, the sun does not seem to be coming from straight above, as you'd expect at 13:00 PM, but more from the right, as if the sun already started its downwards motion later in the afternoon. Whereas a photo on the same spot, taken only minutes apart, seems to show a very different shade and lighting pattern again on Kris' face and body. And when the sun shines bright in the middle of the day, it is really not that easy to make out if it is 13:00 PM or 14:00 PM or even 15:00 PM in some parts of the world. And then there also is a local phenomenon, which is the result of Panama being located near the equator. There appears to be this optical effect in Panama, which makes some afternoons look like late-morning. As a local writer put it, there is something strange about the light in Panama: "The tiny, narrow country of Panama runs in an East-West direction, almost doubling back on itself, serpent-like. Owing to a peculiar optical illusion, the sun here appears to rise in the West, not the East. If the women were not aware of this peculiarity, they would be pulled in the wrong direction, away from town, further into the jungle. This alone is a powerful, potentially tragic story element." Perhaps this special optical illusion also messes with the way the afternoon sunlight reflects, for all we know. making optical sun analyses possible less reliable here? If the sun sets around 19:00 PM, then the angle of the sun at 13:00 PM or 15:00 PM must look significantly different however. Anyway, the end verdict is that the digital camera was set 6 hours too late and one year too early and this was recalculated when investigators mapped out the photos that were taken on April 1st.
WILDXPLOR
Look also at wildxplor's blog post and his photos. Still going by the afternoon (old) timeline, he went up the Pianista trail in the second part of April 2014, by 15.30 PM and was at the summit by 17.30 PM. Now compare his background with Kris' photo, which was said to have been taken at 13.01 PM (instead of 19.01 PM as the camera originally indicated). In his photo there is similar light clouding, but with a bit more blue still visible. The sunlight appears still pretty good for a late afternoon photo session. To me the light seems pretty similar in fact, despite the gap in time (according to police). We can see a shadow directly beneath him and direct sunlight hits the leaves and bushes. And yet there are four and a half hours between both (claimed) photo times.. As Power Pixie (who pointed me to this photo once more) says: "There are no long shadows for 5:30pm sun, due to the fact that they are closer to the Equator. Wildxplor had not reason to lie, and he recorded the time since he was going based on the original timeline and so wanted to get a proper like-for-like." Food for thought, especially since he was careful to document when and at what time he went out there to look for them. So although it appears to be correct what police did in terms of recalculating these photo times to an 11:00 AM start of the trail and 13.00 PM summiting, I am still not entirely sold on this. We have not seen the evidence, have not been presented the precise findings of the 'sun specialist' (which I have been told was not really a specialist at all, but just an employer from the NFI). Nobody bothered to explain away all the off witness accounts either. I still don't fully exclude the possibility that the old timeline is correct after all.
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Update August 2022
The BackpackerCoach made this video in which he recreates photo #486, to determine if it really was a selfie and also whether or not the reflection of the sun on Kris' forehead can actually determine the time at which the photo was taken. Interestingly, it seems not really a fool-proof method. Now, the issue pf course is that he is not in Panama and that the angle of the sun in the United States in August will be different to the angle of the sun in Panama near the equator on April 1st. Regardless, the photo he took looks remarkably similar in terms of light and shade. And this experiment does shed more doubt again on the time determination based on sun reflection in this case (through computer simulations, let's be clear on that). Considering there is only a couple of hours in between Scenario 1 where Kris was pictured there around 11:25, versus Scenario 2 where she would have been pictured there around 14:15. Would that three hours difference, roughly, really show clearly in the light reflection on the forehead, as has been implied by investigators? I am not so sure now. [I am not sure why part of Kris' sunglasses are not reflected in the shadow on her chest. Perhaps it has to do with the curvature of her chest? Hers is sticking out more, undeniably. Could the main part of the sunglass reflection be blocked by the elevated chest part perhaps? I can imagine that the shirt between her boobs so to speak, is not lying flat on her skin, but is elevated a bit, also due to her manner of body turning, and perhaps that's where the sunglass reflection is partly hiding?]
The BackpackerCoach made this video in which he recreates photo #486, to determine if it really was a selfie and also whether or not the reflection of the sun on Kris' forehead can actually determine the time at which the photo was taken. Interestingly, it seems not really a fool-proof method. Now, the issue pf course is that he is not in Panama and that the angle of the sun in the United States in August will be different to the angle of the sun in Panama near the equator on April 1st. Regardless, the photo he took looks remarkably similar in terms of light and shade. And this experiment does shed more doubt again on the time determination based on sun reflection in this case (through computer simulations, let's be clear on that). Considering there is only a couple of hours in between Scenario 1 where Kris was pictured there around 11:25, versus Scenario 2 where she would have been pictured there around 14:15. Would that three hours difference, roughly, really show clearly in the light reflection on the forehead, as has been implied by investigators? I am not so sure now. [I am not sure why part of Kris' sunglasses are not reflected in the shadow on her chest. Perhaps it has to do with the curvature of her chest? Hers is sticking out more, undeniably. Could the main part of the sunglass reflection be blocked by the elevated chest part perhaps? I can imagine that the shirt between her boobs so to speak, is not lying flat on her skin, but is elevated a bit, also due to her manner of body turning, and perhaps that's where the sunglass reflection is partly hiding?]
What are the implications when the Old Timeline is followed, versus the New Timeline?New Timeline: If it is true that the digital camera times were in fact correct, then this places the girls much earlier beyond the Pianista summit, and leaves over two and a half hours between the last photo taken during the day, photo #508 (13:55 PM), and their first emergency call attempt (16:39 PM). Meaning they could have wandered much further into all possible directions in theory, before running into trouble and calling emergency services. This significantly widens the scope of possibilities in regards to what may have happened to them. They may have reached disorientating wilderness by then, if they just kept walking on and on. Seriously drifting away from the trail, for whatever reason. Or they could have ended up in terrain where you cán in fact fall or injure yourself seriously. The New Timeline also shows that Kris and Lisanne started their exploration of the area behind the Mirador in the early afternoon daylight and had plenty of daylight to return once they had taken photo #508 (around 14:00 PM). They would have been back in Boquete well before 16:30 PM and well before sunset if they had just returned after taking photo #508, walking straight back down the Pianista Trail. It is therefore unlikely that the direct reason for calling the emergency services would have been out of fear of not making it home before dark. The New Timeline would allow for a lot of grey area, because anything could then have happened to those girls in 2,5 hours; it statistically increases the chance that they got lost or had an accident in another part of the tropical forest. This all distracts from the possibility of foul play, although it does not exclude that possibility. And if the New Timeline is correct, then I'd say that the most likely reason for the emergency calls would be either that they got lost/feared the sunset, or that they ran into the wrong person or people and were afraid. But then this encounter would have either taken place further away from the summit, or closer by the trailhead if the girls had already turned around to walk back at that point. The New Timeline ALSO allows for the girls to get safely back off the mountain again and go for a swim (more on that in part 2 of this blog).
The Old Timeline is favorable when you believe, or want to claim that Kris and Lisanne would have gotten afraid of the approaching sunset, or that they ran into the wrong person.
Old timeline. But if the witnesses and taxi driver have it correct and the digital camera times were incorrect, then the girls would have in fact tried to call emergency services fairly soon after photo #508 was taken. Meaning that some options then become less likely. For instance, around the time of photo #508 Kris didn't seem injured and they were on an easy accessible and embedded trail. So it was more difficult to quickly get a serious injury at that point. There also was not a lot of time or opportunity then to get desperately lost, and no chance for them to get anywhere near the rivers or monkey bridges. Meaning to me that only two realistic options are left then: either they called emergency services because they feared that they wouldn't make it back to Boquete in time before dark, or they called because they ran into the wrong person. They were beyond the Mirador and had only about two hours of daylight left, thus wouldn't make it back to Boquete before dusk. They needed about 2 to 2,5 hours to walk back to Boquete from the point of the last photo #508. With the sun setting around 18:40 PM that day, this means that Kris and Lisanne should have turned around to walk back to Boquete around 16:15 PM at the latest. Although that would have been already risky, and 15:30 PM would have been a better time in fact. The Old Timeline would increase the likelihood that the girls just got overwhelmed by panic because they realized they walked on for too long and too far in order to make it back home in time before dark. And because the emergency call attempts were then made fairly quickly after photo 508 was taken, it leaves the possibility wide open that something acute or unexpected happened. Such as foul play or perhaps even an accident. The old timeline is favorable when you believe, or want to claim that Kris and Lisanne would have gotten afraid of the approaching sunset, or got lost in the dark, or that they ran into the wrong person.
However, if the New Timeline is correct then it's more likely that the girls walked on for too long and got disorientated or lost. Or that they ran into 3rd party.
The Old Timeline would benefit criminal involvement
Because it makes the chance of something acute happening more likely. Although they could have ran into a bad hombres in both Timelines frankly. But the New Timeline definitely leaves most room for an error on the part of the girls and for them to get lost. I also think the New Timeline would 'benefit' Betzaida Pitti and her team the most. It provides them with two and a half "empty" hours between the last photo #508 and the first 112 phone call. Allowing them to hang up their never proven scenario that the girls could have ended up in a river or a ravine in the meantime. Or encounter deadly wildlife. Mind you: a river which they couldn't have reached physically in that short time under the New Timeline either! According to family and tv teams who walked the same route over the Pianista trail and beyond.. And of course it most of all allows for them to claim that Kris and Lisanne got lost in the meantime. Whereas with the Old Timeline it is almost impossible to keep up that the girls got lost between the last photo #508 (estimated to have been taken around 16:30 PM if the girls left the Pianista Mirador after 15:00 PM) and the first emergency phone call at 16:39 PM. Then foul play looks a lot more likely. And an injury has been rejected as a possibility by Kris' parents, who believe they would have stayed close to the trail then and resumed their hike back the next morning if that had been the case. So now that we have established this, could it be theoretically possible that authorities or a 3rd party could have manipulated the camera time settings, to create the New Timeline themselves? In theory of course, as it is quite a stretch to imagine something like that to have actually taken place. But we have a lot of witnesses here and none of them claims to have seen Kris and Lisanne at the time of the New Timeline.
Because it makes the chance of something acute happening more likely. Although they could have ran into a bad hombres in both Timelines frankly. But the New Timeline definitely leaves most room for an error on the part of the girls and for them to get lost. I also think the New Timeline would 'benefit' Betzaida Pitti and her team the most. It provides them with two and a half "empty" hours between the last photo #508 and the first 112 phone call. Allowing them to hang up their never proven scenario that the girls could have ended up in a river or a ravine in the meantime. Or encounter deadly wildlife. Mind you: a river which they couldn't have reached physically in that short time under the New Timeline either! According to family and tv teams who walked the same route over the Pianista trail and beyond.. And of course it most of all allows for them to claim that Kris and Lisanne got lost in the meantime. Whereas with the Old Timeline it is almost impossible to keep up that the girls got lost between the last photo #508 (estimated to have been taken around 16:30 PM if the girls left the Pianista Mirador after 15:00 PM) and the first emergency phone call at 16:39 PM. Then foul play looks a lot more likely. And an injury has been rejected as a possibility by Kris' parents, who believe they would have stayed close to the trail then and resumed their hike back the next morning if that had been the case. So now that we have established this, could it be theoretically possible that authorities or a 3rd party could have manipulated the camera time settings, to create the New Timeline themselves? In theory of course, as it is quite a stretch to imagine something like that to have actually taken place. But we have a lot of witnesses here and none of them claims to have seen Kris and Lisanne at the time of the New Timeline.
Around 2 hours and 45 minutes Dutch investigators estimated that the time between the first photo the girls took at the start of their hike, and the last photo #508 near the creek beyond the summit, was around 2 hours and 45 minutes. Which matches perfectly with the Old Timeline: the girls were dropped off at the start of the Pianista Trail around 13:40 PM and started their hike around 13:50 PM. It places them near the creek/first quebrada of photo #508 at around 16:35 PM. Four minutes before the emergency call was made. Like a local from Boquete who followed the case from close by just wrote me: "It was pretty much just considered fact that they went up at around 13:00 or later to the trail head, at least to us locals. The earlier timeline was barely ever discussed because witnesses refuted it. The photo time stamping is the only thing that ever made anyone question that. The Panamanian authorities most definitely had a motive to make this go away, labeling it an accident. Tourism is a huge deal here, and is Boquete's lifeline to income for many months of the year (high season from December-mid-April, but also other months), as are expats and visitors seeking to retire here." This also matches the foul play views of Kris' father Hans Kremers, who does not believe they would have walked much further, passing a pretty waterfall a little bit further down the road, without taking a photo of it. On June 20th, Hans Kremers stated in a Dutch newspaper:
"There is no question that they got lost, so they were deliberately taken by someone, we know that now."
And if Kris and Lisanne had continued to walk for an hour on this ongoing and easy to follow trail, then they would have ended up near a meadow of sorts (the paddock), with beautiful views on a clear day like April 1st was. And they would have most definitely wanted to take a photo of that view too, Hans Kremers said. Yet they didn't. Why would they suddenly have stopped taking photos if all was OK with them? Kris' facial expressions are also not happy anymore in the end (although this is a subjective interpretation of me). Something may have been wrong already there. Maybe they ran into another person or group of people by then, who had bad intentions. Because what else could have realistically gone wrong within 5 or 10 minutes of the situation that was immortalized in photo #508? Lisanne may have had an asthma attack, Kris may have injured her ankle perhaps or they may have ran into someone who frightened them. They were only about 2,5 hours away from Boquete at this point; they were still on the main road and had around two hours of sunlight left. Enough time to turn around and walk back before sunset. Yet we have no proof whatsoever that they did. The facts which we do have seem to speak against this: if they really walked back and made it past the Mirador summit, further down in the direction of Boquete, then the girls' mobile phones would have made contact with the nearest cell tower again.. And their phones never regained that contact, according to the authorities.. The phone logs also don't show them powering off their phones at that stage, or setting them to flight mode. I want to believe the hard data, I really do. But unfortunately we have no undeniable rock solid proof of anything in this case, as the investigation was bungled, the telecom data was non-existent and officials may not all be trusted. So in theory, the new timeline would benefit the officials better I think. But... it is a real stretch to imagine them going thát far. Changing the times of all the photos... Also those taken of the trail with the mobile phones.
Changing the time and date of the Canon camera and phones to stage photos/calls is easy though
You can easily change the date and time on the camera. Take a series of photos, which are stored with the manipulated time/date in EXIF. Then after changing the settings back to the current date and time, it then stamps the current date and time in the EXIF data on the next image. If this is what theoretically happened, then those night photos could have been taken at any date between April 1st and the day before the backpack was found, technically. How to Change the Date of your Digital Photographs. Same for changing the time and date on your phone and staging a call, before resetting the correct time. The call attempt will then be logged on whatever edited date and time you want. The actual changing of the date and time in camera and phones shows indeed that you can easily do this: take photos and revert back to whatever time and time zone you need to set it at after taking the photos. Fake calls at pre-set and pre-determined time and date, instead of actually having to sit and wait in the wild to stage a string of 'emergency calls' over an 8 day period. No need for all this complicated technology stuff. I feel that this possibility is constantly overlooked by everyone covering this case...
Video and witness evidence
CCTV recorded the girls somewhere in the morning of Tuesday April 1st in Boquete, in a supermarket and a pharmacy. In this Dutch newspaper it is stated that police confirmed that the girls have been caught on CCTV camera in Boquete, nearby a supermarket* and shortly before they started their hike. Correspondent Marc Bessems also told Dutch news that Kris and Lisanne were seen in a local supermarket on the day of their disappearance. Witnesses also saw the women walking there. Police announced this to Ingrid Lommers, who then posted it on facebook (I added screenshots of this in this blog). Only later did Ingrid post an update, informing her followers that unfortunately, the CCTV was accidentally overwritten. Gone, poof. What a shame.. Marc Bessems also confirmed this. Unfortunately no specific details such as a time have been mentioned or confirmed by local police, and the video which Lommers refers to in her facebook message was never released or copied or transcripted even before it magically disappeared. Sloppy of local police to not make more work of this rather crucial bit of information? If the camera image indeed places them there around 11:00 AM, as is said on some forums, then Kris and Lisanne could not have been at the Pianista trail at that time. And if they were in fact on the Pianista trail as early as 11:00 AM, then the footage of the shops must have captured them... very early, around 09:00 AM most likely, considering they had to go to the host family still to put on their mountain shoes and grab the few things they brought along on their hike. And thén they would have hailed a taxi still. It is strange that police confirmed the existence of this video, but never released it, nor the time stamp on it. But we know that the girls were in Boquete at some point in the morning. Notice how Pittí and Co also failed to verify with the local pharmacies whether Kris and Lisanne went there to purchase cough syrup and throat stuff and sunscreen or insect repellant. That would have been valuable information just the same. At what time were they there? What sort of clothes were they wearing? Alas..
School computer
Police also announced that Kris and Lisanne used the computer from the Spanish Language school that day around 10:00 AM. Eileen later denied this in a private conversation and remembered that the girls were last at that school the day prior, in the afternoon of Monday March 31st, although she was also quick to admit that she does not remember the details anymore by now.
Lee Zeltzer
In this blog post you can read a series of blog posts and the comment sections of a local Boquete man named Lee Zeltzer. Lee was one of the first in Boquete to go out and interview people living at the Il Pianista trail, trying to gather evidence and witness testimonies as soon as possible. But in the comment section of his blog, which was frequented for a large part by Boquete locals, an image arises of the way people there experienced this disappearance case as it unfolded. There is a lot of mention of the witnesses, who placed Kris and Lisanne down the trail around 16:00.
In this blog post you can read a series of blog posts and the comment sections of a local Boquete man named Lee Zeltzer. Lee was one of the first in Boquete to go out and interview people living at the Il Pianista trail, trying to gather evidence and witness testimonies as soon as possible. But in the comment section of his blog, which was frequented for a large part by Boquete locals, an image arises of the way people there experienced this disappearance case as it unfolded. There is a lot of mention of the witnesses, who placed Kris and Lisanne down the trail around 16:00.
All witnesses were off
It seems widely accepted now, also by investigators, that all those witnesses were off. I have not read any statements trying to explain the variety of incorrect witness statements though. Lee Zeltzer was out there pretty much from April 3rd onward, immediately starting to question people on the trail informally once the news of this disappearance broke. So his interviews were right off the bat when people's memories were still fresh. I don't understand why so many people had it wrong, or lied, but one always has to keep the theoretical option in mind that some people have been asked to cover something up. I do not know if that is really what happened here, however. Yes the camera settings became the last word. Even though the date was wrong (set to 2013 and not 2014) and the time was 6 hours off also. You can manually alter those time and date settings easily. There wére also at least 12 different fingerprints and DNA traces found on those cameras and belongings. But that does not deter the investigators in believing the technical data info from the cameras. As Dave M. wrote: "Various witnesses claim to see Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon on their trip to the Pianista starting point and beyond, all are fairly accurate and consistent in their timings of their seeing them, but all are swept aside as irrelevant once the backpack is found and the Camera examined, as that becomes the last word on where and when the two friends were on that day... I don't know what to say. One version is right and one is wrong clearly. But the 'official' timeline has the two on the Mirador at 1pm exactly (EXACTLY 1pm! What timing.) Meaning that when Ingrid Lommers saw them at her place it would have been around 10am and they set off and are seen at the Supermarket just after, meaning.... Ingrid Lommers and others can't tell the time? They mix up 10am with 1pm? It hardly seems credible. I do wonder if these people still stay with their timings, or are they now uncertain and admit to being mistaken? Supermarket camera footage (evidence) that would have settled the matter goes instantly missing - an aspect that becomes a familiar occurrence in this search and investigation, and we are left with the official narrative of two tourists who went on an ill-informed hike and got themselves lost."
Could everything be fake?
There is also a theory that says that these digital camera times and date are all fake entirely. That Kris and Lisanne walked the Pianista trail on March 31st, instead of April 1st. And that on April 1st they were in fact taken to another place entirely by the taxi driver and fell into bad hands. The Pianista photos were fake too; all photoshopped. The reason why there is no known phone log record of their phones for the afternoon of March 31st, is because thát's when they were at the Pianista, being whisked away by criminals soon after. And an ill-intended third party then only had to simply change the date setting on the Pianista photos, to make it seem like Kris and Lisanne went up the mountain on Tuesday instead of Monday, visually supporting the narrative that they never made it back down and just got lost. When in fact the girls were held somewhere else entirely on Tuesday. Some faked emergency calls for the next few days and voila. It requires some solid planning and masterminding, but is it 100% impossible at this stage? No. And witnesses are already cast aside, so there are no qualms in that respect either.
There is also a theory that says that these digital camera times and date are all fake entirely. That Kris and Lisanne walked the Pianista trail on March 31st, instead of April 1st. And that on April 1st they were in fact taken to another place entirely by the taxi driver and fell into bad hands. The Pianista photos were fake too; all photoshopped. The reason why there is no known phone log record of their phones for the afternoon of March 31st, is because thát's when they were at the Pianista, being whisked away by criminals soon after. And an ill-intended third party then only had to simply change the date setting on the Pianista photos, to make it seem like Kris and Lisanne went up the mountain on Tuesday instead of Monday, visually supporting the narrative that they never made it back down and just got lost. When in fact the girls were held somewhere else entirely on Tuesday. Some faked emergency calls for the next few days and voila. It requires some solid planning and masterminding, but is it 100% impossible at this stage? No. And witnesses are already cast aside, so there are no qualms in that respect either.
The moment cell phone connection was lost
Kris' parents have stated during their trek of the Pianista trail, that it was around 45 minutes after the summit that their phone made no longer connection with a cell tower. Investigators also mentioned that on April 1st 2014, the girls' mobile phones no longer made a GSM network connection at 13:38 PM. This matches the New Timeline, considering the girls left the summit shortly after 13:00 PM and would indeed have been at or near the spot where connection is lost around 13:38 PM. So, If the taxi driver and the two school staff members (among others) are correct and the Old Timeline is the correct one, then this also means that the girls would have lost mobile connection pretty much as soon as they started their hike on the Pianista trail (going by this cut off time of 13:38 PM). Which is problematic, as the start of the trail has mobile phone reception. But Matt recently revealed case file information, and phone logs which show that the mobile phone of Lisanne already lost network connection halfway up the Pianista trail. Unlike what every local seems to declare about the entire Boquete side of that mountain having reliable cell phone reception.. (Read more about this in part 4). Only when you climb higher up does the connection become less reliable, and eventually is cut off altogether. Perhaps this still still allows for the Old Timeline to be possible, at least theoretically. Annette Nenner hiked the Pianista trail and went all the way to the paddocks and she published that there is some cell reception on the paddock. This is important information, especially as some people still seem to believe that Kris and Lisanne 'got lost' on that paddock and withered away (unseen or unheard by anyone) in one of its dilapidated shacks there. MISTRUST
The phone log info in the police files also look incomplete at times, with unexplained omissions and random phone usage logged or not logged. Making it hard to be sure where exactly these phones were on the trail on any given time and how they were used. And in my view there is still the (tiny) option left open, that some details of the phone use could have somehow not been described in the phone logs. Or manually altered or erased. We also don't know just how reliable and complete this phone log information as a whole is in the end. Aside from having to rely on the absolute professionalism and neutrality of the investigators/police, there is also the issue with the cell provider. The cell towers could not provide a location for the (supposed but unproven) 'pings' made with the girls' camera's. And neither could the telecom provider or Pittí provide any verified location for their phone use on April 1st. Pittí also didn't explore or scientifically tested on which parts of the trail you precisely do and do not have cell phone reception, to name something. Or which meteorological conditions can influence reception on the trail. And considering the way in which other parts of the forensic investigation were treated by the Panamanian prosecution, I wouldn't be surprised either if we have not received the full and complete or even necessarily all the correct data on these phone connections. Cynical, but well..
The phone log info in the police files also look incomplete at times, with unexplained omissions and random phone usage logged or not logged. Making it hard to be sure where exactly these phones were on the trail on any given time and how they were used. And in my view there is still the (tiny) option left open, that some details of the phone use could have somehow not been described in the phone logs. Or manually altered or erased. We also don't know just how reliable and complete this phone log information as a whole is in the end. Aside from having to rely on the absolute professionalism and neutrality of the investigators/police, there is also the issue with the cell provider. The cell towers could not provide a location for the (supposed but unproven) 'pings' made with the girls' camera's. And neither could the telecom provider or Pittí provide any verified location for their phone use on April 1st. Pittí also didn't explore or scientifically tested on which parts of the trail you precisely do and do not have cell phone reception, to name something. Or which meteorological conditions can influence reception on the trail. And considering the way in which other parts of the forensic investigation were treated by the Panamanian prosecution, I wouldn't be surprised either if we have not received the full and complete or even necessarily all the correct data on these phone connections. Cynical, but well..
COST SAVING
The girls seem to have used their own Dutch SIM card and were notoriously careful with how much money they spent. They didn't want to lose a fortune on mobile phone use (still very costly in 2014, especially calling home from abroad) and so they made a habit of looking for Wi-Fi connections when they used social media. They relied partly on services such as whatsapp, SMS text message and Skype to stay in touch with their families, which relatives have confirmed in various media and in the Break Free TV special. The authors Christian Hardinghaus and Annette Nenner also confirmed in 2024 that case files state that Kris and Lisanne indeed decided against purchasing Panamanian SIM cards. They generally used public Wi-Fi in town, as well as the school's Wi-Fi through the school's computer or their own cell phones. The authors confirm that Kris could in theory make (expensive) calls with her provider, but that she never does. It is assumed that their host family had Wi-Fi, but this is not at all certain, nor confirmed in black and white. In fact, it seems that Kris and Lisanne primarily used the Wi-Fi at Spanish by the River. School staff confirmed that Kris and Lisanne used their computer in the days they were in Boquete. Perhaps the girls also decided to not use their phones on the Pianista trail. as to avoid any unwanted roaming costs as a result of other people's Wi-Fi networks on the trail. And regarding the mobile connection dropping as late as 13:38 PM: as I already mentioned, these telephone data provided are meager, and Panama is unable to even tell us which cell mast made the last connection with the girls' phones.
The girls seem to have used their own Dutch SIM card and were notoriously careful with how much money they spent. They didn't want to lose a fortune on mobile phone use (still very costly in 2014, especially calling home from abroad) and so they made a habit of looking for Wi-Fi connections when they used social media. They relied partly on services such as whatsapp, SMS text message and Skype to stay in touch with their families, which relatives have confirmed in various media and in the Break Free TV special. The authors Christian Hardinghaus and Annette Nenner also confirmed in 2024 that case files state that Kris and Lisanne indeed decided against purchasing Panamanian SIM cards. They generally used public Wi-Fi in town, as well as the school's Wi-Fi through the school's computer or their own cell phones. The authors confirm that Kris could in theory make (expensive) calls with her provider, but that she never does. It is assumed that their host family had Wi-Fi, but this is not at all certain, nor confirmed in black and white. In fact, it seems that Kris and Lisanne primarily used the Wi-Fi at Spanish by the River. School staff confirmed that Kris and Lisanne used their computer in the days they were in Boquete. Perhaps the girls also decided to not use their phones on the Pianista trail. as to avoid any unwanted roaming costs as a result of other people's Wi-Fi networks on the trail. And regarding the mobile connection dropping as late as 13:38 PM: as I already mentioned, these telephone data provided are meager, and Panama is unable to even tell us which cell mast made the last connection with the girls' phones.
The girls set their phones to flight mode to avoid roaming costs.
John van den Heuvel, a renowned crime investigation journalist who went to Panama to investigate the disappearance of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon, confirmed here that the girls sometimes set their phones to flight mode to avoid roaming costs. "Those phones were set to flight mode... Because they wanted to avoid high costs due to roaming. So these girls set their phones to flight mode. But with the use of Wi-Fi they still used whatsapp. So those phones have of course been used those past 2 weeks." Hans Kremers said in October 1st of 2014 however that the Dutch NFI report stated that the girls had their phones not set to flight mode during the first week of April in Panama. They did however often use flight mode in general. Unfortunately the phone's usage seem to have been logged at random at times. Perhaps not every powering off or flight mode action was in the end reliably logged. Also, the Mirador is supposed to have mobile phone coverage on most spots. The Kremers family first reports a lack of reception well after this summit. But Lisanne's phone already lost connection halfway up the mountain, only to regain connection again at 13:14. Meaning that for the first 14 minutes that she was for a fact on that summit, her phone did not regain connection.. A summit which supposedly had all round mobile phone connection. So well... We are unfortunately still left with the need to weigh this information against that information in this mystifying case and debate for ourselves what we do and do not deem logical or likely.
Kris' boyfriend Stephan had last contact with Kris around 14:00 on April 1st. So at 14:00 local time, when they were supposed to be behind the Pianista summit, where there is no cell phone reception....
THE MOBILE PHONE CONTACT AT 14:00 PM LOCAL TIME
Kris' parents state here in one of the very first tv items where they were interviewed, that Kris' boyfriend Stephan had last contact with Kris (it was not specified what sort of contact, but it was by mobile phone) around 14:00 PM on April 1st. So at 14:00 local time. They specifically discussed that part among themselves; was it Panamanian time or Dutch time? No, local Panamanian time, they conclude. That is a problem if the girls were already supposed to be well behind the Mirador by then, where there is no phone reception.. And Kris' parents stated this already on the 3rd day or so of their disappearance, when their memory was still very fresh. It was their very first TV interview also, something which they no doubt were well prepared for. I do not expect Stephan to have deleted that contact moment in his phone. So how is that possible if they were already behind the Mirador by then, as the New Timeline indicates? If true (and we have no reason not to believe Kris' parents on this) then this has serious implications, because it pretty much means that the New Timeline cannot be correct. After all, that timeline places Kris and Lisanne firmly behind the summit of the Pianista Trail, which has reportedly no mobile phone reception, as confirmed in the Answers for Kris video. So perhaps the family made an error there after all? And it was 14:00 PM Dutch time? Or not Tuesday but on Monday that this contact was made? Hardinghaus and Nenner seem to confirm this: "This is impossible. An SMS (also a theoretical internet connection and Whatsapp) would have been registered in the log file. No text message was sent." "Kris opened WhatsApp exactly one day earlier on March 31 around 2pm." On the other hand, Nenner did report cell reception behind the Mirador, all the way near the second quebrada when she was there: ""Logbook Annette (8°51'12.6"N 82°24'24.0"W). On May 10, 2023, I am on my second hike with Feliciano. We have just passed Quebrada 2, where I was able to fill my bottle with fresh water. [..] I take a photo and notice that there is cell phone reception here! In the middle of nowhere [..]." Unfortunately this topic was never again brought up in the media and the Kremers family was not asked about it again. A real shame, as this is an interesting detail that would have been nice to see clear up by them once and for all.
Kris' parents state here in one of the very first tv items where they were interviewed, that Kris' boyfriend Stephan had last contact with Kris (it was not specified what sort of contact, but it was by mobile phone) around 14:00 PM on April 1st. So at 14:00 local time. They specifically discussed that part among themselves; was it Panamanian time or Dutch time? No, local Panamanian time, they conclude. That is a problem if the girls were already supposed to be well behind the Mirador by then, where there is no phone reception.. And Kris' parents stated this already on the 3rd day or so of their disappearance, when their memory was still very fresh. It was their very first TV interview also, something which they no doubt were well prepared for. I do not expect Stephan to have deleted that contact moment in his phone. So how is that possible if they were already behind the Mirador by then, as the New Timeline indicates? If true (and we have no reason not to believe Kris' parents on this) then this has serious implications, because it pretty much means that the New Timeline cannot be correct. After all, that timeline places Kris and Lisanne firmly behind the summit of the Pianista Trail, which has reportedly no mobile phone reception, as confirmed in the Answers for Kris video. So perhaps the family made an error there after all? And it was 14:00 PM Dutch time? Or not Tuesday but on Monday that this contact was made? Hardinghaus and Nenner seem to confirm this: "This is impossible. An SMS (also a theoretical internet connection and Whatsapp) would have been registered in the log file. No text message was sent." "Kris opened WhatsApp exactly one day earlier on March 31 around 2pm." On the other hand, Nenner did report cell reception behind the Mirador, all the way near the second quebrada when she was there: ""Logbook Annette (8°51'12.6"N 82°24'24.0"W). On May 10, 2023, I am on my second hike with Feliciano. We have just passed Quebrada 2, where I was able to fill my bottle with fresh water. [..] I take a photo and notice that there is cell phone reception here! In the middle of nowhere [..]." Unfortunately this topic was never again brought up in the media and the Kremers family was not asked about it again. A real shame, as this is an interesting detail that would have been nice to see clear up by them once and for all.
Old posts from Ingrid
More posts from Ingrid Lommers, head of the Spanish language school the girls attended, are added here. She consistently reported and updated her many friends in Panama and especially those in Boquete during the first days of the girls' disappearance. I added several screenshots of her public social media posts from that month. She urged everyone to look for them and kept morale up to find them back in time. Quote Posted by Ingrid Lommers: "The press in Holland says that a person that thinks he has seen Lisanne and Kris Tuesday afternoon, says that Lisanne and Kris were doubting if they could go on the trail or not. The real story is that this person lives next to another trail and he said that that was also a nice trail, that they didn't need to go to the El Pianista Trail. So they actually went on that trail and were back after 30 minutes saying that they were very tired and were going back to Boquete. They sat on the side of the road to go back to Boquete, not on the side of the road which would lead to El Pianista. They sat for a long time on the road waiting for a bus or a taxi. They have not seen what they finally did." Also, notice Ingrid Lommers emphasizing in her Facebook post of April 4th, added below: "I wander how far away from the "normal" trails they look.. they wouldn't stay away on the normal trail so long, people would see them, they would easily come back but than also.. why would they go far away form the regular trails.. once you are lost you don't keep walking and walking.. I don't know.. we need to be looking and asking around a lot in the civil areas ..". Here Ingrid confirmed that Kris and Lisanne would have noticed if they had somehow strayed from the normal trail. Plus: that even off-trail, locals would have passed them by at some point. This stretch of nature is traversed by locals every single day, we also learnt from people hiking the trail and beyond, including ImperfectPlan and Victor Hugo (more on that in part 4). 
Ingrid was later interviewed by a Dutch investigation journalist in late May of 2014
and she tells him that she was called on Wednesday April 2nd about the disappearance of the girls. She had met Kris and Lisanne personally in the weeks prior in Bocas del Toro. She says this about the girls: 
“I only got to know them personally when they did a 2-week Spanish language course with us in Bocas del Toro (Spanish by the River – Bocas). I used to see them in the kitchen every morning, when I was preparing breakfast for my own group of students. I remember them saying some things about the food now and then. They also joined a cooking lesson that I organized one evening. I did not speak much with them that night either. They weren't very talkative. At least; not with people they hadn't officially been made acquaintance with. I think. Perhaps they were just shy. On Wednesday April 2nd I received a phone call from an intern at the school in Boquete, who told me that they had not arrived back home the previous night. Initially it didn't worry me. Occasionally it happens that students don't come home to sleep. I did not have a clear picture yet then who these students were. If I knew it were these two girls who I had met in Bocas, I would have worried right away, in fact, because they were so serious. No party animals. I asked the intern to inform their family, the agency and the police. Which has happened." When asked about the last time she saw Kris and Lisanne, Ingrid answered: "Probably the last day I was in Bocas. They then spent another full week in Bocas before traveling on to Boquete. [..] I saw them talk a lot with two Dutch boys (Edwin Cornelis & Bas van Lieshout). I don't really know. They didn't really stand out within the whole group and I was busy making my group, who booked the Traveling Spanish Classroom, happy."
INGRID NEVER ASKED THEM ABOUT THEIR PLANS
Ingrid also told the journalist that due to time constraints, she had not asked Kris and Lisanne about their plans before she left Bocas. "Had I done that, I would not have expected (which I had in the back of my mind right now) that they might have decided to walk the Quetzal Trail (if students do that they sometimes stay in Volcan or Cerro Punto and come until the next day)." [..] "I think more research needs to be done on what kind of people live in Boquete. Gringos. Who are they - what are they doing there - what background do they have in the USA. Maybe also ask all the people in Boquete to volunteer to have their house / garden searched and see who does not sign up for it? Maybe look also in our neighborhood, in the vicinity of the school? I think you have to be very careful with this research. The Panamanians really shouldn't feel that we don't trust them. The Panamanians have of course never experienced anything like this. And certainly not in the small and quiet Boquete .. so we have to understand that." Ingrid also said that in the first few days (April 3rd - 5th), many private searches were already taking place. By friends, locals, guides. An adventure company also helped look for the girls. Sinaproc started helping the search early on as well, but initially with few people.
Some more about Guardería Aura in Boquete
Some more information about this daycare center. On the old website of Spanish at Locations, the overarching company that has five school locations: three in Panama (in Bocas, Boquete and Panama City) and two in Costa Rica (Turrialba and Puerto Viejo), the following information was published at the time:
Spanish by the River's old website also stated about Guardería aura boquete that "This daycare is located in the centre of Boquete". Spanish by the River itself is located in another, southern part of town, Alto Boquete. It has been suggested at times that Kris and Lisanne could have just popped round the corner of Aura, while they were at Miriam's place or at Spanish by the River, but this was not the case really. Aura was over an hour's worth of walking away. Here on the local Boquete Ning forum, Aura's location is described as follows: "You have "Guardería Aura", on your way to Casa Esperanza (it's like half way through on the street that runs from Multibank to Casa Esperanza, on the left). Contact: María Elena 720-X." Photo below of Casa Esperanza is from Annette Nenner.
Thanks to Power-Pixie for digging up the address and location of both Miriam's place and Aura. Interestingly, the info leaflet of SbtR of that time does not seem to explicitly require good Spanish language skills, but instead mentions 'singing English songs' with the kids. The things suggested are things Kris and Lisanne could do?CASA ESPERANZA – after school care center for indigenous children: help with the afternoon activities like organizing meal time, afternoon-tutoring classes in English, Computer Sciences, Music, Sports.
GUARDERÍA AURA – Daycare: help taking care of the children; sing English songs, do handicrafts, feed the children.
Hans Kremers has said on Dutch TV that Spanish by the River sent Kris and Lisanne a confirmation email on Friday the 28th of March, telling them that they had volunteer work arranged and waiting for them in Boquete. Only... this wasn't true. It now seems that this was not actually what was arranged yet. In fact, by Monday Marjolein and Eileen had still no certainty about whether or not Maria Elena would take the girls in or not. She decided, while faced with the girls in person who showed up in the conviction that they would work there, that no... in fact she could not help them with work all week. It did not suit her agenda. Kris and Lisanne were treated very rudely. They were sent away as Maria Elena had other plans that week. She also told the girls that their Spanish skills were bad and that there was no certainty that they could do volunteer work there a week later. Maria Elena later told the police: “The two girls, both about eighteen years old, spoke no Spanish at all, they spoke to me in a language similar to French and I told them I didn't need any volunteers; they understood this.” And to investigators she also declared not to know Spanish by the River or Ingrid Lommers. This is strange, as SbtR officially named Guardería Aura on their website as one of the available daycare centers where students could volunteer at. These were package deals, so to speak. Sleep at Miriam's place or at the school, have Spanish classes at Spanish by the River, use the tour guide services of guide F. and do volunteer work to spice up your stay at a school, including Aura. So it appears as if Maria Elena told some untruths there. Why? Lisanne and Kris had prepared, paid for and confirmed with Spanish by the River to volunteer as daycare volunteers at Guardería Aura. We still don't know whether the error lay with Marjolein or Ingrid from SbtR, or by Maria Elena from Aura.And there is no excuse to be so blunt and dismissive to two innocent young tourists, who arrive there full of energy and desire to start their volunteer work week. And who were promised this job in writing by their host school in Boquete. Lisanne had been on top of things, only to be disappointed by the people around her. One could even be of the opinion that this setback kickstarted the tragedy that followed. And that it was this incident that triggering the entire sad and sordid spiral that led to Kris and Lisanne's deaths. We have never heard journalists (or anyone else) question Ingrid about this confirmation email.... What the heck happened here? Did the school staff responsible for this email just prematurely promised Kris and Lisanne that everything was sorted, in the HOPE that everything would get sorted by then? Were they simply running behind the facts? Perhaps all this is down to a mañana mañana mentality; postponing things, winging it all a bit towards the tourists? Or was Maria Elena doing an acting performance on the spot, only pretending she knew of no appointment? Was Spanish by the River focused on raking in students and did they resort to false promises in the process? This is what small businesses at times do in order to get the contracts, and keep the cash coming in. Ingrid offered her international students package deals, with her own school, daycare centers like Aura and host families like Miriam's all involved and receiving money from it. Some people even think that Ingrid is a spider in a web and lured these girls knowingly to the crime den of Boquete for nefarious motives... Make your pick. We just don't know. But it was really unprofessional at the least. And Marjolein should have instructed Kris and Lisanne beforehand that they had no business going to Aura, since the agreement had fallen flat. That would have saved them the shock and humiliation of being insulted and sent away there. But if Ingrid or Marjolein had been honest with them by Friday already I don't even exclude the possibility that the girls would have stayed put in Bocas instead. No reason to leave and go to Boquete, if the volunteer work had been cancelled. And in the midst of this chaos, we have Ingrid who left for Costa Rica, Marjolein who was in the process of knocking off to Costa Rica as well, and a brand new, super young and panicky German intern who had just arrived in Boquete, barely speaking any Spanish... was left to her own device to sort it all out.
If Kris and Lisanne OR their parents had known this beforehand, I doubt they would ever have landed in Boquete. The girls were let down there, in a way. Both by Ingrid and Marjolein who had given false reassurance about the work being arranged for them, and also by Maria Elena, who could not find some space for them to work as volunteers with the children in her center, despite having had a clear arrangement with Spanish at Locations to house some of their students for package deals. Going by the girls' diaries, this experience especially shook Lisanne, who was prone to neat planning. In countries like the Netherlands and also in countries like Germany, where Eileen was from, punctuality and reliability are important and it is considered a bit rude to be late or let people waiting. Let alone to bark at volunteers who simply come round for their bit of the agreement. Yes they were legally adults, but at the same time they were also slightly vulnerable I'd say, especially just with the two of them in Boquete. As Dave Mullen said about this: "It is hard to accept that virtually every person involved in their short time there let them down, in one way or another." It also remains a mystery how Ingrid could state on camera and on her social media for as long as she did, that both teachers saw Kris and Lisanne leave that Tuesday just after 13:00. By that time the photos of Kris and Lisanne show that they were well and true on the Pianista trail. Why has this never been investigated? And which second teacher did Ingrid refer to? With only Eileen present that day and Marjolein in Costa Rica? We don't know.
I had an interesting chat with a technical camera specialist about this case, here's what he thinks Juan is also Dutch and we sometimes discuss ideas about this case. He has his own google album with a lot of case material. I myself wrote mainly these blog posts about this disappearance of Kris and Lisanne, gathering and translating as much relevant information into one place, but I do not create a lot of youtube videos from scratch. (although I uploaded quite a few translated videos about this case on my youtube channel). So we don't work together as a team, but we discuss ins and outs or new findings and have become friends. Anyway, Juan is one of the very first sleuths in this disappearance case. He verified his photo findings with authorities in this field (including a certain Phil Harvey, who wrote the EXIF TOOL software). He wrote them and presented them his discovered data. With Phil Harvey he even had to do a small exam first (!) to even be allowed to pose his question. So as to not waste anyone's time.
PITTÍ MESSED WITH THE CAMERA AND PHONES
The answer Juan received was that Phil Harvey agreed with his findings; the photos from the memory card of Kris and Lisanne's digital camera were first viewed by a computer on June 17th 2014, so before they were sent to the Netherlands and their forensic investigators, who received the items (including both cell phones, the digital camera, the backpack and the two bras) on June 20th. The NFI was officially asked for technical support to read the contents of the electronic devices and to secure DNA profiles or traces of blood on the underwear and backpack. As soon as the results are available, they should be sent by post and email to public prosecutor Betzaida Pittí and Diomedes Trejos at the IMELCF. What the NFI found however, was that several photos were modified in photoshop. Exif data proves this, they agreed. The photo camera was found on June 11th and despite the Panamanian official promising that they would send the photo card straight to Dutch Forensic investigators (NFI) to investigate it and to ensure it was kept safe, these exif data proved that the photo card was not only viewed on a computer by Panamanians, but also altered on June 17th 2014. (Something which Pittí later also admitted). Hardinghaus and Nenner confirm this discovery of Juan in 2024: "The NFI is not informed that Pittí's team has already examined, at minimum, the data from the electronic devices. Therefore the NFI themselves note that some of the photos on the SD card were edited on June 17, 2014. The originals are therefore not available for the NFI's investigation. The NFI investigators are also unaware that text messages and contacts from Lisanne's phone have already been backed up. The Panamanian authorities also refuse to comment again on the data recorded by R."
PITTÍ MESSED WITH THE CAMERA AND PHONES
The answer Juan received was that Phil Harvey agreed with his findings; the photos from the memory card of Kris and Lisanne's digital camera were first viewed by a computer on June 17th 2014, so before they were sent to the Netherlands and their forensic investigators, who received the items (including both cell phones, the digital camera, the backpack and the two bras) on June 20th. The NFI was officially asked for technical support to read the contents of the electronic devices and to secure DNA profiles or traces of blood on the underwear and backpack. As soon as the results are available, they should be sent by post and email to public prosecutor Betzaida Pittí and Diomedes Trejos at the IMELCF. What the NFI found however, was that several photos were modified in photoshop. Exif data proves this, they agreed. The photo camera was found on June 11th and despite the Panamanian official promising that they would send the photo card straight to Dutch Forensic investigators (NFI) to investigate it and to ensure it was kept safe, these exif data proved that the photo card was not only viewed on a computer by Panamanians, but also altered on June 17th 2014. (Something which Pittí later also admitted). Hardinghaus and Nenner confirm this discovery of Juan in 2024: "The NFI is not informed that Pittí's team has already examined, at minimum, the data from the electronic devices. Therefore the NFI themselves note that some of the photos on the SD card were edited on June 17, 2014. The originals are therefore not available for the NFI's investigation. The NFI investigators are also unaware that text messages and contacts from Lisanne's phone have already been backed up. The Panamanian authorities also refuse to comment again on the data recorded by R."
To now see this confirmed officially is a small bombshell in my opinion. It should also shed further doubt on the authenticity of the photo card as we know it today. It also casts more doubt on the fate of the deleted photo #509, because soon after June 17th officials stated that photo 509 had irreparably disappeared. Why have some data been altered and how exactly? Was there perhaps evidence on the camera of something unspeakable that happened to Kris and Lisanne? Check Juan's videos on this topic out here and here. Power-Pixie (also an IT specialist) waded in on this and wrote in response: "😳Why the fuck would they "remove" them in the course of their investigation? What kind of idiots do this in a forensic examination? Does a forensic pathologist remove evidence while examining the victim's body over the course of the investigation? Did the 470 photo files include photo 509? Where is the thumbnail for this photo? You can even use a free online tool to recover a deleted file not too long ago. So thumbnails of the deleted files usually exist, unless wiped out using a computer. They edited the photos on a PC, without making a backup. Then saved the edited photos, back to the SD card? What happened to the originals on the SD card? Why copy it back to the SD card to begin with? Technically from what I researched with mobile forensics, a separate data dump is done on a separate drive. This also can apply to camera data. You copy all known and hidden files on the SD card to the computer first. Then create a backup of those files on the computer, BEFORE examining them. You DO NOT edit the photos, unless they are password protected, and need to be unlocked. All photos that are typically looked at, require a thorough documentation of the process at hand for each photo being "edited" to say brighten it or darken it, but again a copy of this is made first, and then renamed to the appropriate action being made on the photo or saved into a folder for the type of editing. This is something I've worked with film editors, CGI editors etc who have multiple key copies made. You just don't fucking edit the master file, the first generation copy of the file, until there is absolute need to and testing is complete and approved. What a travesty!?!"
The photos from the memory card of Kris and Lisanne's digital camera were first viewed by a computer on June 17th 2014 and several photos were modified in photoshop
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UPDATE: here TVN-2 simply confirms Juan's findings that on June 17, 2014, the date that also appears in the EXIF data, Panamanian journalists were allowed to view all photos from the Memory Card. They may have paid for it, but still: what investigation unit (working together with another nation), leaks photos to the press before the Dutch or even the parents had seen the evidence first?? Showing once more than these photos were seen and most likely altered and worked with before they made it to the Dutch forensics institute (NFI), which was given the task to investigate the digital camera. Update 2 CONFIRMED THAT PITTI MESSED WITH THE SD CARD
Eventually it was also confirmed in the case files that yes, Betzaida Pittí and her team did admit to viewing, rotating and 'brightening' (in photoshop) some of the photos on the girls' Canon SD card before sending the evidence to the NFI: the actual forensic specialists who were asked to do the investigation of the phones and camera. And the Dutch NFI professionals were NOT informed that Pittí and her people had already examined, at minimum, the data from the electronic devices and that they had edited some of the photos on the SD card on June 17, 2014. The originals are therefore not available for the NFI's investigation. And as revealed in SLIP: the NFI investigators were also unaware that text messages and contacts from Lisanne's phone were already backed up. So they weren't able anymore to read out her phone in a safe and controlled manner either. From Hardinghaus and Nenner: "The SD card is being analyzed by a highly qualified digital forensics expert. His job is to recover and analyze all possible photo and video files. [..] On closer examination, the few deleted files turn out to be nothing more than thumbnails of existing photos and videos. Panamanian investigators may have removed them in the course of their investigations. We can recognize some of the original pictures enclosed with the file from their documentation: They were previously edited on the PC and saved again on the SD card in a modified form. Why the authorities stored the manipulated versions on the original memory card and not on a computer raises questions, as they are no longer the original files. The NFI forensic expert does not explicitly mention this ominous circumstance, but at least notes in a commentary on three recordings that they were probably turned. It is not possible to determine from the EXIF data whether the images were only rotated or whether other things were also edited. It is also not possible to determine whether the images may have been manipulated before they were analyzed in the Panamanian laboratory."
I was glad in a way to read this in 2024. So Juan was right all along. And what I have been stressing for years on here about this June 17th SD card changing by Pittí and her team was CORRECT all along as well. And God knows what else they may have done to those photos, for which they now have created themselves an alibi. Another case of your own team trashing potential evidence, like they did with the crime scene? They not only just looked at the content of the phones and the digital camera, but like, well.. impatient schoolchildren one could say instead of professionals investigating a possible crime case (as it was still named back then), they started to work on them in photoshop no less. And then saved these changes! The SD card content wasn't locked first, it wasn't copied and then worked on. The originals were meddled with. When you alter photo originals, the computer or device first asks you: 'Do you want to save/replace this?' These things don't happen by accident, you have to confirm for these photos to be altered by your on photoshopping. By deduction, this makes the authorities either incompetent or evil, if you ask me. Juan was right back in 2014 already when he claimed that the exif data of these photos show that they were manipulated. The exif data of original photos are copied along normally when you copy the photo original. Cropping this photo subsequently for instance, like the media tend to do, does not change these exif data. Neither does reuploading the photo originals. You really have to do a hell of a lot of photo manipulating to radically change these exif data.
But Panama insist they just innocently rotated and photoshopped some photos to make them more clear to see (and then leaked a bunch of them to the Panamanian media, much to the distress of the parents). As if it is completely normal to alter evidence like that. The Panamanians obviously wanted to know what was on that camera and where the last photos were taken. But Pittí should not have gone through all these photos and alter these photos in photoshop to see better what was on them: that should have been left to the NFI to do, from scratch and by the book so to speak. The Dutch had to do with what the Panamese shoved in their direction, investigation wise, which wasn't much. They were allowed to do the investigation of the canon camera and the phones. They may have been given manipulated case evidence. Now it will be hard to be certain if Pittí and staff really 'only' rotated and lightened photos a bit in photoshop. Or also, perhaps, messed with times and dates. Or with an unwanted mysterious photo 509, for instance, of which the specialists have been clear; it could only realistically have been removed with the specialist use of a computer. But that mystery was never cleared up. We still don't know what happened to photo #509. Another confirmed fact by now: there are not two sets of exif data. The exif data of the copies of the photos are exactly the same as the exif data on the original photos. And if the Camera's SD card had its content edited and manipulated (which is beyond doubt now really) it stands to reason that the phones may well have received similar attention. There is now a justifiable cause for also being suspicious of those phone logs.
MISTRUST OF THE PHONE LOGS ALSO
Power-Pixie wrote me about these phone logs, reported on by The Computer Science Department of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (Imelcf): "This is why I don’t trust the phone logs. Did people look at output from the phones attached to their computers? Or did they read the final, “printed” hardcopy report? There’s a big difference there, because the final report can easily redact or leave out what needs to be left out for whatever reason. People cannot challenge this then, and must therefore take it as gospel. The same goes for the original camera’s SD card. Without the card there is no way to know what was deleted, if it was deleted or altered between June 11th and June 17th, 2014."
Power-Pixie wrote me about these phone logs, reported on by The Computer Science Department of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (Imelcf): "This is why I don’t trust the phone logs. Did people look at output from the phones attached to their computers? Or did they read the final, “printed” hardcopy report? There’s a big difference there, because the final report can easily redact or leave out what needs to be left out for whatever reason. People cannot challenge this then, and must therefore take it as gospel. The same goes for the original camera’s SD card. Without the card there is no way to know what was deleted, if it was deleted or altered between June 11th and June 17th, 2014."
ABOUT THE BATTERY LIFE AND THE TIME DEPICTED ON THE CAMERA JUAN SAID "The battery on the Canon camera is strong and can survive a long time. It can take approximately 220 photos on one battery load, but if you don't touch it, it can last a year probably even. Like so many facts in this case may not be facts at all in reality, even the times that are stamped on the digital photos may not actually be correct. This specialist was able to see the times on the EXIF data on the leaked photos, and for the summit photographs it read 19:00 and the year 2013. You can manually set the time and date on the Canon SX270 HS camera, which had not yet a GPS function. Dutch forensic investigators were able to compare the time on a wristwatch that was pictured in one of the girls' photos (a photo which they never made public by the way, so I guess we will just have to trust them on their word here) and which was expected to show the correct local time. They compared this time with the camera time for said photo. To determine the correct times the forensic scientist also used the timestamps of the Samsung photos taken in the same locations, light and shadow conditions, and cloud formations. From this, he concluded that the camera was still set to local time. To determine the Panamanian local time, he consistently subtracted six hours from the displayed times. And based on this, they concluded that the digital camera was set approximately 6 hours ahead of local Panamanian time. The year was set one year too early. The date and time on this digital camera had to be adjusted manually, and Kris and Lisanne seem to not have done so. It's Juan's guess that Lisanne didn't really get familiar with the camera.
EVERYBODY CAN ALTER THE TIME AND DATE
I was told and explained by Juan that anyone can alter dates and times in Windows Explorer. Technically you don't need to take pictures yourself at those exact times. With one click, it is possible to import EXIF data from a random collection of photos into the Panama pictures. And then they contain all the fields from photos you could have theoretically manipulated; all the dates and times changed, without a trace. The only thing a specialist would notice then are few specific red flag fields, which you cannot bypass. But if anyone involved was savvy, they could have easily altered the photos reliably, he believes. Someone could in theory even take pictures with this digital Canon Powershot camera of the girls, and then use software called EXIF TOOL to import metadata from let's say, a NIKON camera and incorporate them into the pictures that the girls took, with one mouse click if they wanted to.
I was told and explained by Juan that anyone can alter dates and times in Windows Explorer. Technically you don't need to take pictures yourself at those exact times. With one click, it is possible to import EXIF data from a random collection of photos into the Panama pictures. And then they contain all the fields from photos you could have theoretically manipulated; all the dates and times changed, without a trace. The only thing a specialist would notice then are few specific red flag fields, which you cannot bypass. But if anyone involved was savvy, they could have easily altered the photos reliably, he believes. Someone could in theory even take pictures with this digital Canon Powershot camera of the girls, and then use software called EXIF TOOL to import metadata from let's say, a NIKON camera and incorporate them into the pictures that the girls took, with one mouse click if they wanted to.
ABOUT THE SD MEMORY CARD
About the (single) memory card of the Canon digital camera the girls carried and the missing photo Juan said: Regarding the space on the memory card they used, nobody but the families and some reporters from a Dutch tv program called 'EenVandaag' or perhaps some newspapers saw the NFI (the Dutch Forensic Institute) report and will know such details. But in 2014 it was normal to use memory cards - theirs was a sandisk one - of 16GB. Back then a card of that size was still expensive. On a normal 2GB card, some 220 big pictures could be stored according to him if the girls made big sized photos. Or way more if they chose not to write the photos in a large format, which they apparently did, going by the quality and size of the photos they made. By the time the nighttime photos were made, there was plenty of memory card space left, and no need to delete older photos to make space. Juan stated that he highly doubts that Lisanne would ever have deleted a photo and more specifically: he does not believe that she was the one who deleted picture #509. Because it isn't that straight forward to remove it thoroughly, especially considering they always used the factory settings of the camera and never even manually zoomed in or moved the click wheel. And Juan also believes that even if Kris or Lisanne did in fact delete photo 509 manually from the camera, then the NFI would have certainly found the file on the memory card. Or in the worst case scenario they would have at least found the name of this photo, and most likely more; 40, 80% or even 100% of the file. He stressed that the psychological aspect of it all is important too: this would have been the first expedition of the girls on their forced week off (while waiting for their school work to start, later than expected). In Boquete this was their first real trip out of town. It gets dark quickly there at that time of year, around 18:30 - 19:00 every night, and if we assume that the time on the camera - minus six hours - is "right" then it was just four hours before sundown when they were at the second creek after the summit.. Which would be a great time to head back, on a first day, with a three hour hike back at least.. No need to start removing photos then, you'd say.
About the (single) memory card of the Canon digital camera the girls carried and the missing photo Juan said: Regarding the space on the memory card they used, nobody but the families and some reporters from a Dutch tv program called 'EenVandaag' or perhaps some newspapers saw the NFI (the Dutch Forensic Institute) report and will know such details. But in 2014 it was normal to use memory cards - theirs was a sandisk one - of 16GB. Back then a card of that size was still expensive. On a normal 2GB card, some 220 big pictures could be stored according to him if the girls made big sized photos. Or way more if they chose not to write the photos in a large format, which they apparently did, going by the quality and size of the photos they made. By the time the nighttime photos were made, there was plenty of memory card space left, and no need to delete older photos to make space. Juan stated that he highly doubts that Lisanne would ever have deleted a photo and more specifically: he does not believe that she was the one who deleted picture #509. Because it isn't that straight forward to remove it thoroughly, especially considering they always used the factory settings of the camera and never even manually zoomed in or moved the click wheel. And Juan also believes that even if Kris or Lisanne did in fact delete photo 509 manually from the camera, then the NFI would have certainly found the file on the memory card. Or in the worst case scenario they would have at least found the name of this photo, and most likely more; 40, 80% or even 100% of the file. He stressed that the psychological aspect of it all is important too: this would have been the first expedition of the girls on their forced week off (while waiting for their school work to start, later than expected). In Boquete this was their first real trip out of town. It gets dark quickly there at that time of year, around 18:30 - 19:00 every night, and if we assume that the time on the camera - minus six hours - is "right" then it was just four hours before sundown when they were at the second creek after the summit.. Which would be a great time to head back, on a first day, with a three hour hike back at least.. No need to start removing photos then, you'd say.
MISSING PHOTO #509
The EXIF data Juan saw on the leaked photos of that day are filled with manipulation entries. Juan emphasized that it is impossible to cook a memory card completely on a PC. Because there is one field, which a PC doesn't allow you to enter, which is the 'time last accessed', which is protected by the computer. Whereas if you take a picture on the camera and lock the memory card while inserting it in a PC, EXIF data will produce three times a similar time: date and time when the picture was taken, the time it was modified, and the time it was last accessed. Juan could also see that one photo file field was changed to 'big endian motorola', which he says is a clear sign of manipulation. But not obvious to spot for a layman. Juan underlines that it is so rare for this reliable type of Canon camera to skip a file number by itself, that we can as good as completely exclude that option. Besides, we know that the photo or video file 509 existed. Its information has just been removed without a trace. So either the deleting of file 509 was a (purposely made) mistake by police, or a 3rd person who handled the camera did it. According to Juan it may have been a picture, or video, taken in distress, in the midst of something. Or perhaps a testimony of sorts, which those handling the camera didn't want to come out. But either way, he concludes that specialist software should and would have found this missing file if it had been deleted manually from the camera. Recovery software would have retrieved it as a file with the name IMG 102-509 or video 509. Juan even tested this on his own similar Canon camera and could find deleted pictures from years ago. And there was never any attention for the memory card or the photos in the press he said, because if you don't know anything about it, you think that 'everything is possible'. There has even been talk about the raindrops enabling the camera to skip numbers, or wetness from the backpack allowing the memory card to corrode, which he says is more far-fetched nonsense.
Just like the false notion that data fields being skipped is something that happens often. With every new photo, thumbnail digitals are recorded, like numbers; details about what future thumbnails should look like. Getting rid of those physical thumbnails doesn't matter; they are always recorded. Yet here they are missing. Non professionals have been saying that the thumbnail digitals are missing as a means to save space. But even this is incorrect, Juan says, as data fields don't ever disappear; they are created when you shoot the picture. Period. It is unfortunate that so little attention was given to this detail by investigators or in the press. The 'Time Last Accessed' was fixed data which couldn't be doctored. And we by now know that indeed, as Juan said, the exif data on the copies of these original photos look exactly the same. Juan says that when it comes to copying photo originals, it is all or nothing with these exif data. Either you have 100% of them, or you have 5% or 2%. Never 50. It is all or nothing. If you reupload a photo on facebook, then yes, all the exif data can disappear. But not when you upload the photos straight from the memory card on a (news) website. Sleuth have for a long time suggested that surely, the photos which were seen in the news had very different exif data from the original photos, shot with the Canon camera. Well no, Juan says correctly. That is not the case. In this case, the exif data of those photo copies and the originals were exactly the same and that is entirely as expected. You can upload these photos to a website, you can download them, reupload them; the original exif data stay intact (everything except for one or two small fields).
The EXIF data Juan saw on the leaked photos of that day are filled with manipulation entries. Juan emphasized that it is impossible to cook a memory card completely on a PC. Because there is one field, which a PC doesn't allow you to enter, which is the 'time last accessed', which is protected by the computer. Whereas if you take a picture on the camera and lock the memory card while inserting it in a PC, EXIF data will produce three times a similar time: date and time when the picture was taken, the time it was modified, and the time it was last accessed. Juan could also see that one photo file field was changed to 'big endian motorola', which he says is a clear sign of manipulation. But not obvious to spot for a layman. Juan underlines that it is so rare for this reliable type of Canon camera to skip a file number by itself, that we can as good as completely exclude that option. Besides, we know that the photo or video file 509 existed. Its information has just been removed without a trace. So either the deleting of file 509 was a (purposely made) mistake by police, or a 3rd person who handled the camera did it. According to Juan it may have been a picture, or video, taken in distress, in the midst of something. Or perhaps a testimony of sorts, which those handling the camera didn't want to come out. But either way, he concludes that specialist software should and would have found this missing file if it had been deleted manually from the camera. Recovery software would have retrieved it as a file with the name IMG 102-509 or video 509. Juan even tested this on his own similar Canon camera and could find deleted pictures from years ago. And there was never any attention for the memory card or the photos in the press he said, because if you don't know anything about it, you think that 'everything is possible'. There has even been talk about the raindrops enabling the camera to skip numbers, or wetness from the backpack allowing the memory card to corrode, which he says is more far-fetched nonsense.
Just like the false notion that data fields being skipped is something that happens often. With every new photo, thumbnail digitals are recorded, like numbers; details about what future thumbnails should look like. Getting rid of those physical thumbnails doesn't matter; they are always recorded. Yet here they are missing. Non professionals have been saying that the thumbnail digitals are missing as a means to save space. But even this is incorrect, Juan says, as data fields don't ever disappear; they are created when you shoot the picture. Period. It is unfortunate that so little attention was given to this detail by investigators or in the press. The 'Time Last Accessed' was fixed data which couldn't be doctored. And we by now know that indeed, as Juan said, the exif data on the copies of these original photos look exactly the same. Juan says that when it comes to copying photo originals, it is all or nothing with these exif data. Either you have 100% of them, or you have 5% or 2%. Never 50. It is all or nothing. If you reupload a photo on facebook, then yes, all the exif data can disappear. But not when you upload the photos straight from the memory card on a (news) website. Sleuth have for a long time suggested that surely, the photos which were seen in the news had very different exif data from the original photos, shot with the Canon camera. Well no, Juan says correctly. That is not the case. In this case, the exif data of those photo copies and the originals were exactly the same and that is entirely as expected. You can upload these photos to a website, you can download them, reupload them; the original exif data stay intact (everything except for one or two small fields).
Comprehensive opinions and explanations from Juan
"On 30 August 2014, the Panamanian lawyer of the Kremers family, Enrique Arrocha, leaked ten photos to the press. These were IMG_491, 493, 499, 500, 505 , 507, 508 and night photos 542 and 550. These ten photos were reduced in size by the way. The originals are 4000x3000, from the Canon Powershot 270 HS. But the leaked photos are only 1024x768 in size, so zooming in is more difficult. But nevertheless, these photos were found to contain the original EXIF data. So I am of the opinion that the original photos that were found on the memory card of the camera from Kris and Lisanne also look this shoddy and imperfect. I have purchased the exact same Canon Powershot 270 HS camera; so I possess the exact same camera that is listed in the EXIF data as being the device. So the EXIF data of my camera's photos are identical in theory to those of Kris and Lisanne. And when you take pictures with it, you notice that time and time again, like a very specialized precision watch, exactly the same list of about 230 metadata fields is created together with a photo. Always complete, never deviant, always the same. And for anyone who does not believe it, you can also go to a photo website like Flickr and do a search for this precise camera model, and all EXIF data are included then, so you can check for yourself then how it works with millions of other photos. So, every time the camera writes a photo onto the memory card, that entire list of data is also stored internally within that photo. So what you should expect here, is that the data from the leaked photos from Kris and Lisanne's camera also all look the same... But that is not the case. Yes, they look 90% the same, but you also see clear traces of manipulation. I have tested it extensively, but when I only reduce those photos (taken with my Canon Powershot camera) in size to 1024x768, all it does to the EXIF data is change 1 field.. But this is not the case with the leaked photos from Kris and Lisanne's camera. In those leaked photos, crucial sections are missing. For instance: The Thumbnail digitals are missing, the MP Image section also, and an XMP section has been added to the information. And what's more: with five photos we see it mentioned explicitly that on June 17, 2014 (just three days before the backpack would be sent from Panamanian forensics to the Dutch forensics NFI), Photoshop-like edits were applied..
So it looks like the Panamanian prosecution had already tampered with that card, or made a copy of it, before the Dutch even had a chance to take their first look at the camera's memory card. But even then entire sections cannot just disappear.. EXIF data will only change if you use your PC doing radical things, such as photoshopping, or manually manipulating fields with values that you overwrite. Virtually nothing changes if you only shrink the photo in size, or when you open it or copy it; then virtually everything will remain the same, except for the time and date when that photo was last opened and changed. But in those ten leaked photos there is so much wrong with the EXIF data, that I can only conclude that they have been manipulated to an unacceptable degree. I also presented this to Phil Harvey, the number 1 authority worldwide in the field of EXIF data and the author of EXIFTOOL, the software that allows you to view the EXIF data of each photo for free. He concluded the same that major changes were made, I have that in writing [see photo above, Scarlet] We are talking here about the crucial bottleneck in this case. Because before that backpack with the camera was - not so accidentally - found by a Ngobe-Bugle Indian from the village of Alto Romero (in the area where four other human remains were found), investigators were working with a completely different timeline. Many witnesses stated that they had seen Kris and Lisanne at very different times however, such as around 13:20, tired and sitting on a low sidewalk, waiting for a taxi.. And that they had been seen in the Spanish language school at 13:10 on April 1st.. But once that backpack was found, it was suddenly declared that: "No no, all the witnesses are mistaken, because on Tuesday 1 April they were at the top of the Pianista at 13:00 PM, according to the camera." However, the first thing that demanded questions was the fact that the year of this camera was set to 2013 instead of 2014. Then the actual time was incorrect: 19:00 PM for the photos at the Pianista summit for example and 19:54 PM for the last photo, number 508. Yet people believe with 100% certainty that the rest of the camera settings were all set correctly? "Oh yeh, well then we just subtract seven hours, because the device will display the Dutch time.." Everything was hung up on these camera times, [Scarlet: while you can in fact easily change the time manually on this particular camera. The fact that this model did not yet have built in GPS, meant that it relied solely on human input for the correct time and date]. While when you look at a photo which was shared by Lisanne's brother, Martijn Froon, photo 499, was shot on April 1, 2013, at 19:00:38... And on top of that, the EXIF data are also seriously polluted and manipulated ... I did my utter best to create a similar EXIF profile with the photon on my own Canon Powershot 270 HS camera, but even I couldn't manage to make the data so bad."
Update: eventually it was also confirmed in the case files that yes, Betzaida Pittí and her team did view, rotate and 'lighten' (in photoshop) some of the photo originals (!) on the girls' Canon SD card before sending the evidence to the NFI: the actual forensic specialists who were asked to do the investigation of the phones and camera. They meddled with and permanently changed a prime piece of evidence.
Update: eventually it was also confirmed in the case files that yes, Betzaida Pittí and her team did view, rotate and 'lighten' (in photoshop) some of the photo originals (!) on the girls' Canon SD card before sending the evidence to the NFI: the actual forensic specialists who were asked to do the investigation of the phones and camera. They meddled with and permanently changed a prime piece of evidence.
About the iPhone 4 and GPS
P., wrote me that he knows a top IT specialist who had told him that Kris' Iphone - even the 4 series - saves all the GPS data somewhere on a microchip for at least 10 months. Even with a dead battery. Even with a deactivated tracker and even without a connection on the mobile network, or when out of range of any antennas. I honestly do not know enough of mobile phones to be sure this is true, but I found this: "Yes, the iphone 4 has gps. Yes, you can trace my location without interne. The GPS chip in the iphone works as any other GPS chip. It does not need internet to get a position. However, the Maps app on the iphone requires an internet connection. Your GPS knows where it is, it simply has no map on which to plot that location without the internet _when using the Maps app." And: "The compass app will give you your location, in degrees, minutes and seconds of latitude and longitude without requiring an internet connection. As mentioned, if you want to display your location on a map, you either need an internet connection to download map information (as with the Maps app, or MapQuest and others) or you need an app installed that includes all its maps as preloaded images (so that it does not need to download any image data)." Not sure Kris had such an app working on her phone. P. wrote: "So if the phones can be checked by a specialist in Holland, this will answer lots of questions, it will show the track of the phones." - Well unfortunately the investigators declined offers to share their evidence and have other people do second opinions. If nobody is willing to reopen the case and allow other (neutral, professional) specialists to reevaluate the evidence, then the case is stuck. I don't understand this level of reluctance at the highest judicial levels.
Juan wrote the following about the EXIF data of the photos of Kris and Lisanne:
"There are tons of photo metadata available from ten pictures. However, there are strange things going on there.
-- EXIF times and XMP metadata times differ by 5 hours. It's a matter of interpretation which set of times you use.
-- The year of the camera was set to 2013.
-- The Dutch forensics institute had no way of knowing, if the entered time in the camera was correct.
-- We deal with downsized copies of the original 4000x3000 photos.
-- You can alter date, time and more, even in Windows Explorer. It's a low threshold.
-- Camera temperatures were recorded... coldest at the top (22 degrees Celsius), and IMG_505 was warmest, indicating 25 degrees Celsius.
-- IMPORTANT: all thumbnail info is missing in the EXIF data. While it is and should be present in ANY photo coming straight from a memory card. It's just something that has to be there, and one obvious indicator that the files have been tampered with.
-- Five photos show that on June 17th, someone altered them using Windows Photo Viewer. This might have been from the Panamanian prosecutor's office, saving the photos they should have just left untouched, for the Dutch forensics to investigate.
-- EXIF data shows, photo 508 was most likely part of a photo burst sequence, forcing the camera to record time in hundreds of a second.
-- EXIF time of photo 508 shows, it was shot at 19:54:00, while photo 507 was created at 19:54:50... another indicator of tampering.
--The photo of Kris at the Mirador was made with an iPhone. The EXIF version of 0221 (instead of, version 0230 present in all camera photos), and the 72-bit composition rather than the 180-bit or 96-bit architecture of the Canon Powershot photos, gave it away.
--Juan then further explains: "I have discovered which indicator field tells immediately if a photo comes straight from an untouched source, like a memory card, or if someone else tried something with it. Yet to not make any hypothetical bad guys smarter, it's best not to reveal it. Needless to say, all the photos available to us, have been modified."
--Regarding photo IMG_499, Juan wrote: "The brother of Lisanne for instance, has a Facebook banner made from photo 499, yet that's crystal clear in 2048x1568 pixels. That is an indicator, he got the original 4000x3000 picture. Cause if he'd use our downsized copy, this could never have been the case. All metadata clearly indicates, the original photo format was 7 megapixels."
-And about the source of all the photos from Kris and Lisanne's Pianista trip he wrote: "Thumbnail EXIF data don't disappear. I presume, the Dutch authorities got the backpack and the camera with the card.. the versions [photos] we know, surfaced on August 28th, and were leaked to the Panamese media. The source is tv2n, or nexpanama, or journalists like D. Abrego."
-About the reliability of the time stamp on these digital photos Juan wrote: "Since they were all downsized [the original photos were reduced in size to the 1024x768 media friendly format], the red flags in the photo metadata all went off. Which doesn't mean these technical data are useless, not at all, they seem genuine. Yet I find it very tricky to base an entire timeline on such an unreliable timing device." - And then there is also the infamous night-head photo 580, which according to several photo connoisseurs has been rescaled, cutting possible information from the initial larger shot out.
K. I. replied to one of Juans videos, detailing the strange circumstances around missing photo #509: "If you remove the SD card from camera and take it to PC then through file manager you "cut" the file 509 jpeg, it won't be a copy remaining on SD. There was some discussion that the card was put in PC and either reformatted; or 509 deleted but you'd be able to still recover as you correctly point out from file allocation table. Reformat would destroy all photos so that wasn't done. So I believe one possibility is 509.jpeg was cut and paste on PC and SD reinserted back to camera."
Juan replied: "The point is, it’s certain the SD card was inserted into a PC unsecuredly, so all EXIF DATA got contaminated. That is why I found traces of edits from three days before the backpack and the camera was shipped to the Dutch forensics institute, in the EXIF DATA of the copies which where used in the media. You can always tell if an SD card has been untouched, or not. Any contact with a PC changes parametres, especially in the ENDIAN domain. And formatting a card only erases the index. All bytes remain where they were. Completely filling a card with zeroes is more effective. But even then good software will be able to tell if a picture or video 509 ever existed. Anyway, the EXIF data were so heavily contaminated, it seems like someone doctored the card and changed photo names and times. Or swapped them with metadata from other random pictures."
Juan also wrote: "In my conducted experiments, you could always retrieve at least the name of the file, plus vast portions of the file that was deleted. Memory card storage is pretty chaotic, all over the place, like a computer hard disk. So, often 30% could be retrieved, or 70%, or 90%.. if no one else but the girl touched the camera, the success rate of retrieval of at least the file name should be guaranteed.. And I tested over and over, this camera doesn't skip numbers randomly.. not in a fast photo burst, not when used intensely." [..] "37 different fingerprints were found on the backpack and everything inside the backpack was immediately shown on television, including the memory card of the camera. So there were definitely other fingerprints on them. So many anomalies were detected, the Dutch Forensics just seemed to have given up and shrugged their shoulders about it. I found evidence in the EXIF data three days before the phone, camera and the entire backpack was shipped to the Netherlands, they messed with the photos, a Photoshop flag and even by going crazy myself on original Canon photos I couldn’t make the mess they did. [..] And during that time, the Dutch Forensics Institute spent 99% of their time and resources on the MH17 jet which was shot down over the Ukraine killing over 200 Dutch citizens. It seems the report focused almost entirely on the usage of the mobile phones.. and they only listed a table with names of images and time, concentrating only on what could be seen on the photos. Which is a shame."
Juan also wrote: "With free to download EXIF Tool software, you can alter a lot manually, including photo numbers, time, date, and 200 things more. Yet one variable, will give it away, which stores, if an image was imported untouched from the memory card, or if has been tampered with, or altered on a PC. Yet only a bright mind, will notice it. It's my understanding, that the forensics didn't care at all for these EXIF Data, which is almost the only solid lead in this case. They had other priorities, which is very aggravating to me. [..] It was late August 2014 when lawyer Arrocha leaked ten photos of the camera to the press, when he was on a five day interview expedition in the Culebre area, to apply pressure. On two Panemese national tv sites you could find picture 491, 493, 499, 500, 507, 508, 542 and 550 amongst others, in a 1024x768 format, while the originals are 4000x3000. Yet these downsized copies appeared to have pretty much intact EXIF data, with these time indications, you can also see in the Forensics report at the start of this video. Now these copies of the originals containing the data all disappeared online. The problem is, these EXIF data show signs of intrusive manipulation. People who have no clue about it claim it happened because of the news sites. Yet I conducted numerous experiments to see, if downsizing an original picture and uploading it, had any effect on the EXIF data. Well, only one or two fields changed, but not the whole list of red flags from those pictures. Now it’s my hypothesis: the original photos which the forensics investigated look as bad, data wise. While a pristine set of data looks time after time the same, on a Canon Powershot, and doesn’t have thumbnail digitals missing etc. In certain fields you could see, some pictures were altered with photo software on a Windows PC, 4 days before the backpack with camera and evidence where shipped from Panama to the Netherlands. Which leads me to believe, Betzaida Pitti and her crew put the memory card in their pc out of curiosity and this way foolishly polluted the one crucial field: time last accessed. Cause that field cannot be altered, if you doctor a photo, that time and date is written by Windows source code. Yet if you read a memory card and lock it, so no communication occurs with a PC, the time last accessed should be the same as the time the picture was taken. So, lots of interesting clues, I would very much like to investigate on the original pictures. But if they are contaminated, which I suspect, then it’s certain the girls didn’t die of natural causes. Cause some people doctored the memory card, yet without being too smart. While the Dutch forensics institute seems to have totally neglected this part of the evidence, cause of lack of knowledge, time, or the notion they discarded everything cause the Panamese office of Betzaida Pitti ripped the files off the card and polluted everything. But it’s just not possible, by simply copying the files. Heavy doctoring took place. [..] Also the fact, that there's only six seconds between photo 499 and 500 of Lisanne on the top, is sheer impossible. The two spots are at least six metres apart, and then you'd need to pose still, while the photographer needs to rush as well. That is why it looks to me, the murderer or his cronies, manually on a PC, became the directors of the memory card, painting a scenario, changing data and the sequence... cause these data contain so much rubbish, while every untouched photo from a memory card produces exactly the same kind of parametres, with red flags in variables, only known to experts. But ok indeed after the top the mood seems different. Kris is way in front, something I would hate on my hikes in a hostile environment at high altitude, with crevasses and such. So maybe Kris got annoyed with Lisanne, who might have trouble due to her volleyball injury, or respiratory and throat problems the landlady talked about."87Philips replied: "Thanks, these are interesting points and I did not know most of it. I will look deeper into it. But the other point again: You are right, photos 499 and 500 could not have been taken with only six seconds apart. But there is a better reason: In photo 499 the sky is blue and you can see from the shadow Lisanne's face is throwing on her body that the sun is quite high. The bush in the bottom left corner is also quite dark. In photo 500 it is suddenly very very cloudy and the bush (on this photo on the bottom right corner) is much lighter, because now the sun shines from a different direction. So photo 500 must have been taken much later than 499. It seems clear they were at this spot twice. [..] The claim that on this spot you would often have clouds on the "left" side and blue on the "right" side my be right, but there it is too extreme. The bush in the bottom left corner of photo 499 is the same as the one in the bottom right of 500. This shows that the two spots she was standing at are only a few metres apart. From the angle of photo 500 you should definitely see some blue. Furthermore, 499 and 500 throw different shadows. In 499 the right side of Lisanne's body is shadowy whereas in 500 it is not."
Juan replied: [..] I support your claim they were at this spot twice yes.. the cloudy skies and the impossibility of six seconds give that away. And in my experiment, of writing 100 photos on the card, using a stopwatch with exact timing, the camera never failed in writing down the correct time the picture was taken.
Column E says that Face Detect Auto Focus was only applied once, while that was the basic setting of the camera.
Column F shows the number of valid focus points. 1/9 means that they immediately pushed through without focusing. On 493, no less than 4 zones were focused at the same time.
Column G indicates whether the camera has recognized a face.
Column H shows the shutter speed.
Column K indicates whether the infamous field of 17 June has been found.
Windows Photo Viewer 6.1.7600.16385 is a metadata field, which means that a Photoshop-like operation has taken place. So even if you have never used Photo Viewer, but edited something in Canon Photo Studio, for example, it will display that value.
Formatting - When you format a memory card, all you do is erase indexes. Photo data is saved crisscross on a memory card. It is the index which keeps track of what is saved where and in which sector any given photo, built up from specific crisscross elements, can be found. So when you format a memory card, you do not change these sectors and their content. You delete the index. And then specialists can retrieve a lot of that data, if they want to. It may not be 100%, it may only be, say, 40%, but something will be found then. Only a very thorough 'deep-format' overwrites also all the crisscross data, and replaces them by zeros. Only then everything on the card is gone.
-Windows photo viewer - 'Windows photo viewer' is code language. When the exif data of a memory card or of a photo mentions this, it does not mean that the photo was opened with 'Windows photo viewer', which is not even an existing program. No, it is when you change a photo in photoshop, that in the exif data of the manipulated photo this code 'Windows photo viewer' appears. It is simply a code for a technical process. And the exif data of original photos are copied along normally when you copy the photo original. Cropping this photo subsequently, for instance, does not change these exif data. Neither do reuploads. You really have to do a hell of a lot of photo manipulating, to radically change these exif data.
Update May 5th 2021:
UPDATE 2024 - In their book Still Lost In Panama, the authors Hardinghaus and Nenner wrtie: "Numerous theories are circulating on the internet that the day photos were manipulated by cropping, i.e. Kris and Lisanne were cut out of other pictures and inserted into the scene of the Pianista. This would at least be a conclusive explanation for the considerable discrepancies concerning the time of the hike and the girls' clothing. The theoretical possibility exists, and we also notice that certain areas appear strangely distorted and blurred, which is atypical for the camera used. This blurring does not appear in the photos of the girls taken before their hike to the Pianista Trail. On the contrary, the images always appear sharp and clear. So far, however, no one has been able to prove that cropping has been used. On the other hand, nobody has proven the opposite. We have confronted several experts with the question of whether the photos provide evidence of cropping and have not received a satisfactory answer. We were told in unison that it was highly unlikely, but that it could not be ruled out, as the overall quality of the images was too poor. However, the person who managed such a manipulation must have been a master. The unanimous opinion: It was either perfectly done or not all."
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