Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Fibers on Rifle

A tuft of several cotton fibers in dark blue, gray-black, and orange-yellow shades was found lodged in a crevice between the rifle’s butt plate and wooden stock. FBI special agent Paul M. Stombaugh, assigned to the Hair and Fiber Unit of the FBI Laboratory, compared these fibers on November 23, 1963, with fibers from the shirt Oswald was wearing when arrested in the Texas Theatre, finding that the colors, shades, and twist of the tuft fibers matched those in Oswald’s shirt. Stombaugh cautioned that fiber analysis cannot yield absolute identification, testifying that while there was “no doubt” the fibers could have come from that shirt, the possibility of another identical shirt could not be eliminated.

Oswald’s Shirt Fiber Evidence

The Commission accepted Stombaugh’s probabilistic assessment and concluded the fibers most probably came from the shirt Oswald wore at his arrest, the same shirt he wore on the morning of the assassination. Marina Oswald testified she thought her husband wore that shirt to work that day, and former landlady Mary Bledsoe identified the shirt on Oswald approximately 10 minutes after the assassination by a distinctive hole in its right elbow. A bus transfer obtained when Oswald left the bus was still in the shirt pocket at his arrest, undermining his claim to police that he had changed shirts. Stombaugh also testified the fibers “looked as if they had just been picked up” — clean, well-colored, with no grease or fragmentation — indicating they were deposited “in the recent past,” which together with evidence that Oswald had not been at Ruth Paine’s Irving home (where the rifle was kept) for 10 days prior to November 21 and the absence of evidence he used the rifle between September 23 and November 22, supports a finding that the fibers were deposited on the rifle on the day of the assassination.