I don’t think I kept the book, but in Derek Finkels’s book he wrote that Rob much later eventually found a pair of his multi-coloured shorts at his friend’s home who had a pool. They had a reddish/rust stain on them, but tested negative for blood.
Are they *the* shorts a witness saw him wearing that night, we don’t know. From what I know and what was written in the book, Rob seemed to have only a few items of clothing that he wore repeatedly on rotation. I mention this because people around him would be more likely to remember what he wore, and when he was likely to wear it, imo.
I think it was Rob’s sister-in-law that also mentioned Rob wearing the coloured shorts that day, which Rob disagreed with.
He and his family differed on their recollections of what he was wearing that afternoon. Rob’s mother said she saw him leave the home, but Rob said she was asleep. So, recollections varied.
* All of the above is what I learned from ‘No Claim to Mercy’.
I think the main points that bug me were that Rob and Elizabeth seemed to have broken up, but he denies that. She complained that he had been following her. She also didn’t attend his graduation or the ball. Something no girlfriend would miss, imo. Especially as Elizabeth was described by all as attentive and thoughtful. (She did buy him a gift.) Rob said she was working at one of her part-time jobs and was unable to attend. But she bumped into Rob after the ball and didn’t accept an invitation to go to a restaurant with his friends.
No smoking gun, of course, I just don’t understood the situation. People plan for months in advance and most girls put a lot of thought into their outfits.