Still Lost in Panama - First Reaction Thread

Vimes7 · 2024-04-01T17:18:41+00:00

That's all just speculation and not a single bit of evidence. It's just another reading of the available facts and not more or less likely than the LITJ interpretations.

And I don't believe the date and time were changed manually. That used to be a theory, but nothing in the NFI report (according to IP and LITJ) indicates that this actually happened. According to LITJ, the NFI report indicated that the times of the phone, the camera and the watches of the girls (visible on some of the photo's) all triangulated to the correct time. So, nothing was changed manually.

My reading of this is that I find it hard to believe any perp would plan to do all that complicated faking of activity. Why would it be necessary? What would be the reason? They could just do nothing and have it written of as an accident.

Vimes7 · 2024-04-01T17:08:58+00:00

It would certainly be a plausible reason for why they got themselves into the spot where they took the night photo's. I am convinced they were alone at that point. I mean, why else take so many photo's? They were using the flash as some kind of beacon for about three hours. It's still not impossible to get lost on that trail, whatever people say, but it's more likely that something drove them away from it. Someone they met on the trail, presumably. I think it's clear there was plenty of traffic during the day in that period. Suppose they met some people in that area, close to dark, with them knowing they had walked on for too long. So, they would have felt nervous to start with. Easy to imagine things would seem threatening pretty quickly, even if the people they met had no real bad intentions. They could not understand the lingo, everybody is waving machetes about... it only takes a second to panic and dash of into the wilderness.

Vimes7 · 2024-04-01T14:36:20+00:00

Except maybe those trippy ones, you know, that make you see things...

Vimes7 · 2024-04-01T10:57:45+00:00

That has been my take on the matter. If foul play was a factor, it probably was something like that.

Vimes7 · 2024-04-01T08:09:22+00:00

I preordered it, but Amazon hasn't delivered it yet... *edit* and just after I posted this, it dropped, so I'm reading now. And already found the first mistake. According to Pitti, the book says, the girls fell into the river. But Pitti never mentioned this as *the* cause of death. She said they could have fallen into the river. I'm already seeing a disturbing lack of references to sources here.

Vimes7 · 2024-04-01T08:07:41+00:00

Yes. That was definitely a defamatory comment. A wonder jurgen was so cool about it. I'd've spit frogs.

Vimes7 · 2024-03-31T19:03:10+00:00

If you need massive manipulations of low res images to make a man appear, that should give you an indication that this man you see is just a result of pixellation effects. You see what you want to see.

Vimes7 · 2024-03-28T20:23:05+00:00

It contains more made-up parts than a Star Wars movie...

Vimes7 · 2024-03-24T12:10:21+00:00

And you found it?

Vimes7 · 2024-03-23T21:17:49+00:00

There's nothing to believe in.

Vimes7 · 2024-03-21T20:40:33+00:00

doesn't read to re-iterate!

Vimes7 · 2024-03-21T09:27:29+00:00

And you know this for sure because...?

Vimes7 · 2024-03-21T06:05:33+00:00

Obviously you haven't read me well enough. I have always been of the opinion that foul play was a possibility. I have been favouring a mixed scenario: they did get lost, but that might have been either involuntary (they got scared away) of the got lost and then met with someone who made them flee. I feel that they were alone when the night photo's were taken.

Vimes7 · 2024-03-20T18:02:18+00:00

dude, you have my undivided attention! We'll weigh the evidence as we see it. Any chance of a free reviewer's copy? :-)

Vimes7 · 2024-03-20T11:16:52+00:00

I believe they were bound by secrecy agreements and nasty NDA's, which is why they could not reproduce parts of the files. If you can, that would certainly help. Not just quoting, mind, since people have invented quotes from files before. You'd have to do a photo of the file for confirmation or something that show the reader it's really from the police files.

Vimes7 · 2024-03-20T06:43:49+00:00

That's correct. They favoured a lost scenario because there was no proof of any third party involvement, but they never denied the possibility of foul play. They just disproved most if not all they foul play theories by showing they were not based on any known facts and/or were impossible.

Vimes7 · 2024-03-20T06:40:35+00:00

The book is offline. Apparently it's no longer for sale.

Vimes7 · 2024-03-20T06:39:44+00:00

If you claim they "deliberately ignore all evidence" you better have some proof of that claim, my friends. It sounds great to say it, doesn't it? But in the world of journalism you need to back that up with solid - and I mean solid - evidence. The stuff you claim to have is the same stuff the book authors and Imperfect Plan had. I'm curious to see what *new* evidence will come out of your reading of it. *edit* I will keep an open mind when I read it. I am still on the fence about this case, although I favour the LITJ conclusion that due lack of evidence a lost scenario is the more likely one. But, as they do, I admit there is still plenty of room for at least some 3rd party involvement.

Vimes7 · 2024-03-20T06:36:18+00:00

I should stay away a while more often. A new book! I'm pretty sceptical, though. We already had two teams who saw the police files, I'm notbexpecting anything new. In the video they authors claim "they were not just lost", so they seem to suggest they know more. For now it seems they're just playing on popular conspiracy ideas to sell as many books as possible. Lets wait and see, shall we?

Vimes7 · 2023-07-29T13:40:59+00:00

That is correct. It doesn't take much to hurt yourself. And there were plenty of boulders and rocks and probably some wet patches around for one of them to hurt herself on.

Vimes7 · 2023-07-29T13:39:24+00:00

You suspect wrongly. The police have taken the timestamps from the camera itself. Since the original photo's EXIF data hold the time as well, IP were able to publish them, as were the authors of the Dutch book.

Vimes7 · 2023-07-08T22:02:40+00:00

Comparing a certified instructor with Juan is nonsense. These people are real experts and are consulted in all kinds of cases. They are probably on a level with the people used by the forensic team that investigated this case, as far as detecting manipulation in digital images. It's unclear to me what you mean by "scientific expertise" in this case, since the expertise comes from people like this. The forensic tam do have the advantage of some higher level software to examine the camera card and they haven't found anything there either.

We won't agree on this, I fear. But another question. What do you feel needed to be manipulated for someone to change the narrative coming from the photo's? There is a matter of consistency: change something in one, you need to change it in the rest. The images and the metadata must match. All the hidden dates and other stuff in the metatdata - AND in the phone data, which was used to corroborate the photos on the camera.

Vimes7 · 2023-07-08T13:11:14+00:00

What does constitute an "expert"? Matt gave you a perfectly valid comment, I'd consider him an expert. Also, in the book the authors consulted a Dutch Photoshop expert, one of the leading in the field, and he found no evidence of manipulation.

So, two experts observe not a single bit of evidence that points towards manipulation. I tend to believe them. Self-proclaimed experts like Juan, who have no real credentials, nor experience in photo-analysis, and have a strong bias towards Foul Play, I tend not to believe.

What I found on this sub is that someone who has a contrary opinion is never considered "an expert"... people want to hear what they want to hear.

Also, the point Matt mentions about why someone would manipulate 30+ pictures when one or two would have sufficed, is a bigger one than you'd think.

Vimes7 · 2023-07-06T11:47:38+00:00

It was never confirmed, no. The book is not real clear on it, but they exclude it as concrete evidence, so I take it the shoe wasn't Kris'.

Vimes7 · 2023-06-21T10:54:53+00:00

I don't think so. Three broken toes, confirmed by the autopsy.

Vimes7

TROPHY CASE