They didn't mike up Dean and Gary Magnesen for the press conference Tuesday where it was announced that Melvin Dummar is suing a former Hughes Corp. official and a Hughes family member for fraud.

The Magnesen brothers — one in a Hawaiian shirt, the other in a sport coat — stood off to the side as first Dummar's lawyer, Stuart Stein of Albuquerque, and then Dummar himself addressed the media about reopening yet another chapter in a saga that began in the quiet of a Nevada night nearly 40 years ago when Dummar said he rescued a stranded Howard Hughes from near death in the desert.

The claim attracted worldwide attention a decade later when Hughes died and a will emerged that left a sixteenth of his $2.5 billion estate — about $156 million — to the good Samaritan from Utah.

In court, the will was contested and dismissed as a fraud, leading to a life of shadows, scorn and whispers for Dummar.

Enter the Magnesens.

First came Dean, a Salt Lake businessman who works in the liquidation business.

When few would hire Dummar, Dean Magnesen did, and for many years Dummar became part of the "traveling circus" that is part and parcel of the liquidation world. He joined a team of liquidators who traveled around the country together, living in hotels and apartments, sometimes for as long as three months at a time, while closing up businesses.

"You spend a lot of time together," said Dean, "and the most common topic of conversation for us, after 'Who did what with whom the night before?', was, 'Was Melvin telling the truth?' "

Over time, Dean, for one, came to believe Melvin was telling the truth, and he wasn't alone. "Line them all up who traveled with us," Dean said, "and there isn't one who who will tell you he thinks Melvin wrote that will himself."

It was in late 2001 when Dummar, after another round in a recurring bout with cancer, confided in Dean that he hoped to clear his name before he died. That wish prompted Dean to call his brother, Gary, a retired FBI agent living in Las Vegas.

"I knew Gary did investigations like this and that he'd written a few things as a hobby," said Dean, "so basically I just put them together. In all the years he'd been written about, no one had ever talked to Melvin and written his side of the story."

Gary came into the project an admitted cynic. But the more facts he uncovered — such as discovering solid evidence that Howard Hughes spent time in the remote part of the desert where Dummar claimed to have found the billionaire — the more he believed. "I went from a skeptic to an advocate," Gary said.

Three years of writing and research led to Gary's book, "The Investigation," which was published last fall.

It was "The Investigation" that led to the filing of the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court.

"If it wasn't for Gary Magnesen, we would not be here today," said attorney Stuart Stein as he nodded toward a distinguished FBI agent-looking man in a sport coat while an emotional Melvin Dummar choked back tears.

And even farther in the background, wearing a flowered shirt, stood the brother responsible for making sure Gary Magnesen got involved in the first place.

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Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.