Utahn sues once more for a piece of Hughes' pie

The story is the stuff of legends.

A lowly gas station attendant says he picked up a disheveled man found lying on the road in the Nevada desert in 1967 and drove the man to Las Vegas, only to find out later that the man was billionaire Howard Hughes, who, in his will, reportedly left him $156 million, or one-sixteenth of Hughes' $2.5 billion estate.

Thirty years later, that former gas station attendant — Melvin Dummar — will try for a second time to enforce a will he says was penned by Hughes.

Standing across from Salt Lake City's federal courthouse beside his wife, Bonnie, and his attorney, Stuart Stein, Dummar shed tears as he once again recounted the story of his fateful run-in with the eccentric billionaire.

"On the way to Las Vegas he told me who he was, but I didn't believe him," Dummar said. "I gave him some change, and that's all I ever saw of him."

Dummar called a press conference to announce the filing of a federal lawsuit against Hughes' cousin, William Rice Lummis, and former Hughes staff member Frank William Gay , alleging the two defrauded him out of his inheritance and concealed evidence that would prove Hughes' "holographic will," also known as "the Mormon will," to be legitimate.

Among the purported will's 16 beneficiaries was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was also to receive $156 million.

After Hughes' death in 1976, a jury in a Nevada probate court proceeding concluded the will was a hoax and awarded the Hughes estate to a group of Hughes' cousins. Dummar never saw a penny.

Members of Hughes' staff described the billionaire hotel and real estate magnate, movie producer and aeronautics pioneer as a recluse who never left his hotel suite in Las Vegas. Because of that, they claimed the man Dummar picked up could not have been Hughes.

Now, with the help of retired FBI agent Gary Magnesen, Stein said, Dummar's team has evidence from three new witnesses that can show that Hughes did leave Las Vegas on several occasions to visit brothels and explore airport sites in Nevada. Stein said they also have evidence that Lummis and Gay concealed evidence and bribed witnesses during the probate trial.

Among those new witnesses is a pilot, Robert Deiro, who says he flew Hughes to a licensed brothel called the Cottontail Ranch in December 1967, fell asleep while waiting for Hughes and was later told Hughes had left the brothel alone. Stein points out that Dummar found Hughes a few miles from the Cottontail Ranch.

Magnesen said he met Dummar through his brother shortly after he retired from the FBI. Magnesen said at first he thought Dummar's story was crazy, but after a three-year investigation that began in June 2002, Magnesen says he now believes the account.