Mr. Stombaugh. Yes, sir; it was my opinion that these fibers could easily have come from the shirt.
Mr. Eisenberg. Could you go into that in a little more detail, Mr. Stombaugh?
Mr. Stombaugh. Yes. Mainly because the fibers or the shirt is composed of point one, cotton, and point two, three basic colors. I found all three colors together on the gun.
Now if the shirt had been composed of 10 or 15 different colors and types of fibers and I only had found 3 of them, then I would feel that I had not found enough, but I found fibers on the gun which I could match with the fibers composing this shirt, so I feel the fibers could easily have come from the shirt.
Mr. Eisenberg. Mr. Stombaugh, I asked you a hypothetical question before concerning whether the rifle could have been a mechanism for transferring fibers from the blanket into the paper bag, and as I recall you said it could have.
Now, is it inconsistent with that answer that no fibers were found on the gun which matched the fibers in the blanket?
Mr. Stombaugh. No; because the gun was dusted for fingerprints and any fibers that were loosely adhering to it could have been dusted off.
The only reason, I feel, that these fibers remained on the butt plate is because they were pulled from the fabric by the jagged edge and adhered to the gun and then the fingerprint examiner with his brush, I feel, when brushing and dusting this butt plate, stroked them down into that crevice where they couldn't be knocked off.
In time these fibers would have undoubtedly become dislodged and fallen off the gun.
Mr. Eisenberg. Mr. Stombaugh, is there anything you would like to add to your testimony?