LAS VEGAS — A crime scene analyst lent tepid support to the murder case against Margaret Rudin Friday, telling jurors that the red stains on her bedroom walls "are consistent" with blood splatter from multiple gunshots to the head.

Michael Perkins' testimony was a limited endorsement of the prosecution's theory that Rudin, a 57-year-old socialite nicknamed the Black Widow, killed her millionaire fifth husband Ron as he slept in the couple's bedroom.

But Rudin's defense team attacked Perkins' carefully couched findings as overstated and speculative.

"'Consistent' has a nice flavor to it, but what it really means is maybe it is and maybe it isn't," said defense lawyer Tom Pitaro, who accused Perkins of "throwing a quasi-scientific term at us when what you really mean is maybe it's possible."

Rudin, who faces life in prison, claims her husband, a real estate developer worth $11 million, simply disappeared in December 1994 and says she has no idea how his charred remains ended up in a desert fire pit a month later.

In January 1995, when the body was found and suspicion focused on Margaret Rudin, Perkins supervised a team of analysts who spent seven hours poring over the bedroom for clues. He said they found about 15 spots of "apparent blood" on the ceiling and three walls of the room.

DNA experts are expected to testify next week that the stains match blood found on a handkerchief belonging to Ron Rudin.

On Friday, his second day on the stand, Perkins showed jurors a diagram of the dots' location and, under questioning from prosecutor Chris Owens, said the stains originated from a point on the south wall where the couple's bed was located and had the hallmarks of blood spatter from a gunshot wound.

He said many of the stains might be explained by the "vent hole theory" of spatter in play in cases of multiple gunshots to the head. Under the theory, blood and brain matter are pushed out of the initial bullet hole by subsequent shots. At least four bullets were pumped into Rudin's head.

Pitaro, who grilled Perkins for five hours, ridiculed this conclusion, however, getting the analyst to admit he had first heard of the theory a month before the trial began.

"This thing happened in 1995, and then two months ago you talked to somebody over the phone ... [and] your testimony is now based on this," Pitaro said.

Perkins defended himself, saying he only recently learned the theory name but had seen the effect it described several times before.

He also explained how he had tested the room for the presence of blood with the chemical agent luminol. He said he checked the results with a second test and found an area over the bed positive for blood.

The defense suggested that the luminol test was worthless because Rudin's former wife, Peggy, committed suicide with a gun while in the room in 1978. Perkins acknowledged that brain matter from that suicide was still on the ceiling when he searched the room, but said he concluded the blood-positive area above the bed was not attributable to the suicide.

As the afternoon drew late, Judge Joseph Bonaventure urged the lawyers to "move along" a half dozen times, ultimately telling them he would keep the weary-looking jurors until both sides finished with the witness.

Pitaro pressed gamely on, becoming more animated as the energy level in the courtroom ebbed. At one point, the portly attorney sprawled himself on the floor in front of the jury box, mimicking a sleeping victim. At another, he jogged through the gallery with his hand shaped like a gun to suggest Perkins' theory had the assassin lurching around the bedroom instead of quickly killing the victim.

Pitaro repeatedly pointed out that Perkins did not know how high the couple's bed was and had no evidence about the location of Ron Rudin's head at the time of the alleged shooting. Holding a model of Rudin's skull in one hand and Perkins' diagram in the other, Pitaro said, "The problem is the one piece of physical evidence we have, you can't reconcile with the diagram."

When Perkins insisted that his theory was "possible," the defense lawyer shot back, "It's possible we're going to get hit by a meteor, but we don't govern our lives by it."

Testimony resumes Monday.