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LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A 68-year-old former pilot has come forward to bolster the account of a Utah man who says he rescued Howard Hughes in the desert in 1967 and was subsequently written into the billionaire's will.
Guido Robert Deiro, a Las Vegas real estate broker and auctioneer, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he was Hughes' pilot on more than a half dozen business-related scouting missions and secret nighttime jaunts to two Nevada brothels.
Every flight was a round trip for Hughes, except one some time between Christmas and New Year's Eve in 1967, he told the paper.
Deiro said he remembers flying Hughes to the Cottontail Ranch about 160 miles northwest of Las Vegas. He remembers dozing off in a booth in the brothel's kitchen and then being told by a maid he had to leave.
Deiro said he asked about Hughes, and the woman told him, "He left a long time ago."
"I was unceremoniously shown out," said Deiro. "I get back in the airplane (to fly back to Las Vegas), and I figure I'm fired."
Deiro's account appears to support the story of Melvin Dummar, the 61-year-old frozen-meat delivery man from Utah who claims to have rescued Hughes in the desert six miles south of the Cottontail Ranch in late December 1967.
Dummar, whose story was ruled a fraud in 1978, is back in the news, thanks to a 2005 book that supports his claims. He filed a federal lawsuit this month for $156 million he insists Hughes left to him in a will that mysteriously appeared after the billionaire's death in 1976.
"I look forward to being deposed. I want to get the truth out there," Deiro said. "I'm not passing judgment on the validity of the Mormon Will, but I can tell you unequivocally that Melvin Dummar picked up Howard Hughes in the desert and dropped him off (in Las Vegas).
"This is not about me. I don't have a dog in this fight."
Deiro's story directly contradicts what has long been said by Hughes' closest allies, including former top aide Robert Maheu: that the eccentric billionaire never left his suite at the Desert Inn during his time in Southern Nevada.
Because of Dummar's pending lawsuit, Maheu refused to comment for this story.
Deiro said Hughes hired him in the spring of 1967 and had started visiting Cottontail Ranch to pursue Sunny, a striking redhead with a small diamond embedded in one of her teeth who he knew from another bordello called Ash Meadows.
"She had a star quality about her. She just looked elegant and slightly out of place," Deiro said.
Deiro said his discretion on flying missions was quickly rewarded with more missions and more responsibility.
Marianne Thompson, who once worked as an administrative assistant for the Hughes Tool Company's airport operations in Nevada, said Deiro became "sort of a Man Friday for Mr. Hughes."
Deiro said he has never spoken to anyone about being compensated for coming forward with his story. All he wants to do is set the record straight, he said.
"Hughes didn't care about anything but aviation and women, in that order," Deiro said. "What's really unbelievable is that he'd spend four years locked in a hotel suite with that kind of appetite."
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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
