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The Chandler kidnapping - something odd?

My great-aunt, Kathleen was a red-head well into her 70's. It was much more pale than the deep auburn of her youth but still undeniably red.

In my 20's, I kept my curly hair very short. I only need to get a haircut every 4-5 months. When it was cropped, there wasn't enough of it to curl and as it grew in the curl would keep it close to my head. When it was wet, you could see that it was longer, but dry it would look the same (just messier) for months.

Women who are constantly dieting have less hair growth. If Mrs. Chandler is not being fed well, that could also affect her hair. Plus your hair grows more slowly as you get older.

It is also pretty easy to cut your own hair when it is short. If they have had her for over 3 months, they may have allowed her a pair of scissors if only to give her something to do. If that's the case, I would say it was well over a month ago. To me, her hair looks grown out. It's shaggier.
 
Maybe someone got bored speculating about Lockerbie.
Does having a haircut, or being allowed to cut ones own hair, for the cameras, necessarily mean that they arent being treated badly in many other ways?
There is a point where pretending to be an internet sleuth, just looks kind of ghoulish.
 
bookitty said:
To me, her hair looks grown out. It's shaggier.
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I was wondering that myself, comparing the pictures. You could be right. It's probably the simplest explanation even though it looked unlikely to me on the TV pictures.

What do you think about Paul Chandler's close crop?

Rolfe.
 
Saw the news reports today and her hair looks a lot longer, as for the colour given the quality of the video I'd say it could well have shown "grey" roots. His hair has been cut - looks like a quick run over with a clipper.
 
MRC_Hans said:
But these things are strange. Not to derail your thread, but remember when Saddam Hussein was caught? He was supposed to have been in hiding for what? 10 months? Yet he sported a beard that any normal man would take a couple of years to grow.
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Average beard growth rate is about a half inch a month, but that's average. Some people grow facial hair much faster, some much slower. Based on the pictures of his capture, it looks like Saddam had about 4 inches or so of beard, which doesn't seem unusual at all for a 10 month time span.
 
Rolfe said:
I was wondering that myself, comparing the pictures. You could be right. It's probably the simplest explanation even though it looked unlikely to me on the TV pictures.

What do you think about Paul Chandler's close crop?

Rolfe.
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I don't know anything about men's hair. Growth probably slows as you get older but other than that, it looks pretty much the same. My guess would be that one of the pirates loaned him an electric trimmer that leaves half-inch of hair.

The pirates know that they are in a tricky spot. They can not treat the captives too well because they want people to fear for them. They also can not treat them too poorly because that might encourage rescuers to attack them, consequences be damned. So you keep the prisoners from looking to disheveled and allow them to say that they are unhappy.
 
Somalia has barbers and hair dye. See the dyed beard that Hassan Dahir Aweys has for some reason.
 
Mmm, maybe. The stories about being treated "very cruelly" don't sit well with hairdressing facilities though. It would be nice to think they're not being treated as badly as they say they are, I suppose.

Rolfe.
 
Without having seen the photo(s) referenced, I wonder out loud; do the pirates have long unkempt hair? If not, then it would seem that at the minimum, rudimentary barber supplies are available to them.

Whatever the case, it wouldn't be in the pirates best interest to appear as if they are willing to let their captives die of neglect, so it wouldn't surprise me if they were treated to a few considerations, like a haircut before being seen by an outside doctor.

And surely "cruel treatment" is relative, yes? For all we know the Chandlers are being given accommodations more or less on par with their kidnappers whose lifestyle is considerably poorer than Western standards.

The point I suppose is that they're alive and (probably) not being actively abused.
 
The photos are all linked.

The Chandlers say they are being kept in solitary confinement and I think he said they were being regularly beaten (I could be misremembering that because I don't see it in the online reports).

Rolfe.
 
The middleman who masterminded the release of Paul and Rachel Chandler is Dahir Abdullahi Kadiye, a former minicab driver from London... :- Channel 4 News

Coincidentally, I've been held to ransom a couple of times in a London minicab.
 
geni said:
After two ransom payments not so good.
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I didn't know that bit when I posted above. I see that BBC news page has been very considerably added to since I originally posted the link.

Who could be unhappy that they're free, but paying a ransom puts everyone else in renewed danger.

Rolfe.

ETA: You see what I mean about the hair though? I suppose she must just have trimmed it herself with scissors and the red is natural.
 
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Rolfe said:
Who could be unhappy that they're free, but paying a ransom puts everyone else in renewed danger.

Rolfe.
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Well hopefully their terrible plight will discourage other civilian boaters from that part of the world. As for commercial shipping....?
 
MRC_Hans said:
That would seem the obvious guess.

But these things are strange. Not to derail your thread, but remember when Saddam Hussein was caught? He was supposed to have been in hiding for what? 10 months? Yet he sported a beard that any normal man would take a couple of years to grow.

I think we are often cheated.

Hans
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Cheated how? This past year, I let my beard grow. By the ten-month mark, my beard was easily as impressive as Saddam's ten-month beard.

Either I'm not a normal man, or people have wildly unrealistic assumptions about the degree to which hair growth varies from individual to individual.

If there's one thing I've learned from the Apollohoax forum, it's that a layman's naive expectation of what should appear in a photograph is reliably wrong.

Not being an expert hairdresser, nor having access to high-quality "before" and "after" imagery to study, I'll happily assume I don't have any idea what may or may not be an anomaly in the lady's hairstyle.
 
Good to see this thread is back on track again - discussing hairdressing.
I was hoping when the BBC correspondent shouted a question at the Chandlers when they deplaned after a diversion to Mogadishu airfield, it would have been, "Are you looking forward to a visit to the hair salon?". Unfortunately, he didn't, he asked them something inane, before he was bundled away by a minder (who had nice hair - btw).
 
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