Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Melvin and Howard,’ Part II

Armed with a former FBI agent and a former pilot, Dummar renews his case for part of the Hughes estate

Melvin Dummar had long since given up on getting a share of the late billionaire Howard Hughes' fortune. And for good reason: In 1978, Dummar became a national joke when a Las Vegas jury ruled that the basis for his claim - a handwritten will that surfaced mysteriously - was fake.

"I've never really gotten over it," Dummar says. "For 30 years, everybody just laughed at me and treated me like some kind of criminal, a forger. Until a few months ago, I thought it was a lost cause."

But now Dummar is back, seeking another day in court and what he considers his rightful share of Hughes' estate. In a lawsuit filed Monday, Dummar claims to have new evidence and a compelling new witness: a pilot who says he flew the late Hughes to a brothel near where Dummar says he happened on to him.

With the suit filed Monday in federal court in Salt Lake City, Dummar began another chapter in one of the wildest estate battles in U.S. history.

When the eccentric billionaire died in 1976, Dummar (pronounced Doo-MAR) emerged as an improbable heir. He said a will delivered to a gas station he ran in Utah entitled him to $156 million, a reward for the night in 1967 when he said he had found a dazed man facedown on a desert road and drove him to Las Vegas. That man, Dummar said, told him he was Howard Hughes.

But Dummar's tale fell apart at trial. And he got nothing but a dubious place in history, folklore and Hollywood, thanks to the Oscar-winning 1980 film "Melvin and Howard."

Now 61 years old and eking out a living delivering meat along those same desolate Nevada roads, Dummar is hoping for a real-life sequel. His co-stars this time include an author who once was an FBI agent; a former Hughes pilot who is breaking his silence; a prostitute with a diamond-encrusted tooth; and a lawyer who has a weekly radio show about estate planning.

The lawsuit is based on new evidence that purportedly corroborates Dummar's claim that Hughes indeed was in the desert that late-December 1967 night. The defendants are two elderly Hughes beneficiaries: William Lummis, the main family heir, and Frank Gay, a former Hughes executive. Dummar alleges fraud, unjust enrichment and racketeering during the probate case, and requests $156 million, plus interest since 1978, and punitive damages.

Acknowledging that the odds are long, Dummar says this won't be a "cakewalk." The new complaint doesn't specifically ask the court to reconsider the validity of the will. Rather, it contends, among other allegations, that Dummar was cheated out of a fair trial because Lummis and Gay allegedly concealed evidence of Hughes' movements. Dummar's allies hope that new witnesses and indirect evidence will be enough to generate a settlement, if not a favorable verdict.

Lummis, a cousin of Hughes, declined to comment. At 77, he lives in Houston and serves as a trustee for the nonprofit Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Gay, 85 and living in the Houston suburb of Humble, also declined to comment. He recently stepped down from the medical institute's board of trustees, his last tie to the Hughes empire.

The original Dummar claim was based on a document dubbed the "Mormon will," because it was disclosed by the Mormon church. The will divided Hughes' $2.5 billion estate among several medical, educational and social groups, and relatives and employees. The Mormon church was to receive one-sixteenth of the fortune, as was "Melvin DuMar."

But his credibility collapsed under attack by Hughes family lawyers. Dummar admitted he had lied when he said he didn't know about the will. In fact, he had steamed open an envelope left with him but addressed to the president of the Mormon church. Because he had read it, he knew he was a named beneficiary when he dropped the envelope off at Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City. The seven-month trial featured dueling testimony by handwriting and ink experts. Moreover, the Hughes entourage argued that the industrialist never left the suite he holed up in at Las Vegas' Desert Inn between 1966 and 1970. Therefore, Dummar couldn't be telling the truth about his supposed desert encounter with Hughes.

Broke from the trial and scorned as a con man, Dummar drifted from job to job and settled in Brigham City, Utah. He started Dummar's Premium Food - bacon is his best seller - and makes four-day delivery runs to rural Nevada and Wyoming in a pickup with nearly 400,000 miles of wear, and a broken radio and air conditioner.

Dummar suffered two bouts of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In 2002, bald from chemotherapy and bedridden, he had a visit from Gary Magnesen, a former FBI agent who is the brother of a man for whom Dummar had worked. Magnesen took an interest in the case. "I was very skeptical of Melvin, but I decided to investigate as a personal challenge," says Magnesen, who in the FBI had battled organized crime in Las Vegas for 16 years.

At his own expense, Magnesen tracked down Hughes associates and pored over obscure property deeds. His confidence in Dummar grew as he developed a theory about why the reclusive billionaire might have ventured to the wasteland northwest of Las Vegas: Hughes had been buying mines in the area where Dummar said he found him.

Then a man named Robert Deiro - once a Hughes Tool Co. pilot - surfaced with a sexier explanation. Deiro had long dismissed Dummar as a charlatan. But in 2004, Deiro, a Las Vegas businessman, read a newspaper story that sent him bounding for the telephone to contact Dummar. A detail in the article, in which Dummar was interviewed, made him think: "Jesus Christ, this guy's telling the truth!"

That clue was Dummar's stray reference to finding Hughes near the Cottontail Ranch brothel. In 1967, Deiro was managing a North Las Vegas airport owned by Hughes and occasionally flying the boss on discreet missions. One night between Christmas and New Year's, Deiro says, he flew Hughes to the holiday-festooned Cottontail for a regular tryst with Sunny, a redhead who had a diamond in an upper incisor. "You couldn't see it unless she smiled broadly," he recalls. "She was the class of the field."

By Deiro's account, he fell asleep on a banquette in the brothel's kitchen, waking up around 4 a.m. to be told that his "friend," Hughes, had left. Deiro flew back to Las Vegas. No one mentioned the incident, and he never again saw Hughes or the aide who had arranged the secret flights.

Deiro says before that fateful night, he and Hughes had been in frequent contact. They flew together to scout sites for Hughes' dream: an airport for supersonic airliners.

Having run a side business of "midnight special" flights to brothels from Las Vegas, Deiro says he assumed that role for Hughes. On their first jaunt, "I had to get $100 from petty cash, and Hughes took it from me to pay," he recalls. In 1967, he says, he flew the billionaire to meet Sunny twice at Ash Meadows brothel and twice at Cottontail.

Deiro left Hughes for an aviation job in California that he believes Hughes arranged. Before he quit his job with Hughes, he says, his boss ripped out pages of his pilot logbook to get rid of records of the brothel runs, and Deiro says he had to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

He decided to go public after the 2004 newspaper article because "I felt instant empathy for Melvin. I realized he'd been diddled," the 68-year-old says.

Magnesen, the former FBI agent, checked Deiro's background and worked his account into a book about his investigation, which he published late last year. The revelations would have been little more than consolation to Dummar had Stuart Stein not read the book and called him.

Stein is an estate-planning lawyer in Albuquerque. He invited Dummar and Magnesen to be guests on his Saturday morning radio show in January. Besides its entertainment value, Stein said, the Hughes case was a cautionary tale: Let a professional prepare your will to avoid any probate "silliness." After some research, the 59-year-old lawyer agreed to represent Dummar. "It's karma coming back to right a terrible wrong," Stein says.

It could also make several people very rich if Dummar wins - or settles. Stein, as his lawyer, stands to collect a share. Magnesen says he will collect 10 percent of any court award.

Deiro, who says he used to get kickbacks from brothels in his pilot days, says, "I don't have a dog in this hunt. I have my own money."

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