Melvin Dummar
| Melvin Dummar | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Melvin Earl Dummar August 28, 1944 |
| Spouse(s) | Linda J. West (divorced 1964–1967) Bonnie A. Bonneau (1973-present) |
Melvin Earl Dummar (born August 28, 1944) is a Utah man who earned attention when he claimed to have saved reclusive business tycoon Howard Hughes in a Nevada desert in 1967, and to have been awarded part of Hughes' vast estate. Dummar's claims resulted in a series of court battles that all ended in rulings against Dummar. A Las Vegas jury determined in 1978 that the will, leaving Dummar $156 million, was a forgery. Dummar's story was later adapted into Jonathan Demme's film Melvin and Howard in 1980.
While working at a service station in Willard, Utah, Dummar claimed to have discovered a disheveled and lost man lying on the side of a stretch of U.S. Highway 95 about 150 miles (240 km) north of Las Vegas, Nevada, near Lida Junction. The man asked Dummar to take him to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. Dummar claimed that only in the final minutes of their encounter did the man reveal his identity as Hughes.
After Hughes's death in April 1976, a handwritten will was discovered in the Salt Lake City, Utah headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though purportedly written by Hughes in 1968, the will had many strange discrepancies. It named Noah Dietrich as an executor, despite the fact that Dietrich had left Hughes' employ on bad terms in the late '50s. The will left approximately $156,000,000 to the LDS Church and although Hughes had employed many LDS workers, he had never been a member of that church. The will left money to his two ex-wives, Ella Rice and Jean Peters, even though both women had alimony settlements that barred claims on Hughes' estate. The will was rife with misspellings, including misspelling the name of Hughes' cousin. It called Hughes' famous flying boat, the Hughes H-4 Hercules, the "spruce goose"—a derisive nickname that Hughes had always despised. Most oddly, the will left one "Melvin DuMar" of Gabbs, Nevada one-sixteenth of Hughes's estate.
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