When his fingerprint was found on the envelope that contained the will, Dummar acknowledged he was the one who delivered it to LDS Church headquarters. But he claimed he got the document from a mysterious stranger who brought it to his gas station. Dummar said he read the will and didn't know if it was real or a hoax. Not knowing what to do, he drove to the Church Office Building and dropped it on a desk.

After a Las Vegas trial that lasted several months, a jury declared the will a hoax and branded Dummar a liar.

"I wouldn't have had a chance even if God himself had delivered the will," Dummar said last week. "So many people thought I was a con artist or a scammer. And they treated me like a criminal."

But retired FBI agent Gary Magnesen hopes to rescue Dummar's reputation. He's a former top organized-crime investigator in Las Vegas. After he retired, someone asked him to look into Dummar's story.

"I thought Melvin was a kook," Magnesen said from his home near St. George. "It didn't make any sense at all. Why was Howard Hughes out in the desert in the middle of nowhere? Why did he look like that? Didn't make any sense at all."

But after two years of investigation, Magnesen switched from skeptic to advocate. "I believe it completely," Magnesen said. He's rewriting the Dummar story in a book to be published this fall.

He said he discovered three important new witnesses who prove beyond a reasonable doubt Dummar's story is true. They include employees of Hughes who knew the reclusive billionaire ventured from his Las Vegas hotel in 1968. "Howard told them that he had been picked up by Melvin after it occurred," Magnesen said.

His investigation also turned up a 1968 deed that may help explain the desert encounter between Hughes and Dummar. It shows the Hughes organization purchased an interest in 32 mines, located on the very dirt road where Dummar says he picked Hughes up.

"This explains why he was there," Magnesen said. "He had an option to buy those particular mines at the exact period of time that Melvin picked him up."

The veteran FBI man says he's found strong evidence there was obstruction of justice, intimidation of witnesses and possible jury tampering during the trial of the will's authenticity. "And so there was a miscarriage of justice," Magnesen says. "Hopefully, at least, I will have straightened that out."

He hopes his findings will undo the image of Dummar as a fool and a fraud. "He's had to live with that all these years," Magnesen said. "As this new evidence now comes up, hopefully people will know he's telling the truth."