Their cause of death could not be determined definitively; Dutch authorities working with forensic and search-rescue investigators initially thought it likely the students had accidentally fallen from a cliff after becoming lost.

Kremers was described as an open, creative, and responsible individual, while Froon was described as aspiring, optimistic, intelligent, and a passionate volleyball player.

[9] Only a few weeks prior to leaving for Panama, Froon had moved in with Kremers in a dorm room in Amersfoort, and they worked together at the café/restaurant called In den Kleinen Hap.

They both saved up money for six months and planned to go to Panama together on a special holiday, hoping to learn Spanish and to do something of significance for the locals, particularly volunteering with children.

They toured the country for two weeks before arriving in Boquete, Chiriquí, on 29 March to live with a local family for a month while volunteering with children.

[12] The women wrote on Facebook that they intended to walk around Boquete, and it was reported that they had been seen having brunch with two young Dutch men before embarking on the trail.

[14] On 6 April, their parents arrived in Panama along with police, dog units, and detectives from the Netherlands to conduct a full-scale search of the forests for ten days.

[15] Ten weeks later, on 14 June, a local woman turned in Froon's blue backpack, which she reported finding by a riverbank,[16] near her village of Alto Romero, in the Bocas del Toro Province.

Froon's Canon camera contained photos from 1 April suggesting that the women had taken a trail at the overlook of the Continental Divide and wandered into some wilderness hours before their first attempt at making emergency calls but with no signs of anything unusual.

[21] Kremers' denim shorts were found atop a rock on the opposite bank of the tributary, a few kilometres away from where Froon's backpack had been discovered.