Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
John Hollenhorst Reporting A Utah man shed tears today as he announced a new court battle in a saga dating back almost 40 years. Melvin Dummar says he was cheated out of a fortune willed to him by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.
His own attorney says Dummar has been an object of scorn and laughter since the 1970's. He says new evidence will show that fraud and perjury by Hughes insiders led a jury to reject Dummar's strange tale.
In pursuing the new evidence, we found the tale was even more bizarre than everyone thought.
When we visited the Cottontail Ranch brothel last year we were pursuing a sensational lead. Legendary billionaire Howard Hughes supposedly had a yen for a prostitute who had a diamond in her teeth. That strange passion may write a new ending to a story that's haunted Melvin Dummar for decades.
Melvin Dummar/ Brigham City: "Huuh! Over the last 30 years I have been deeply hurt because of this whole situation."
A jury just didn't believe Dummar's story, later made into a movie. In 1967, he supposedly found Hughes lying injured in the Nevada desert and gave the billionaire a ride to Las Vegas.
Hughes supposedly rewarded Dummar in a handwritten will that gave Dummar and the LDS church one-sixteenth each of the Hughes fortune.
But Hughes aides testified Dummar's story couldn't be true because the billionaire never once left his hotel during the late 60's. A jury declared the will a forgery.
Ken Sander/ Sanders Rare Books: "The so-called Mormon will was proven to be a fake decades ago, and I don't think time is going to improve its authenticity."
Stuart Stein/ Dummar's Attorney: "The trial itself was unfair. And it was unfair because the other side did not tell the truth. They knew that Howard Hughes left his hotel on many occasions."
New witnesses say Hughes did leave to inspect mining properties and to visit brothels.
Bob Deiro told us he was secretly Hughes's personal pilot. He claims he flew the billionaire to the Cottontail Ranch to see Sunny, the diamond-studded prostitute. Hughes disappeared from the brothel and Dummar found him, just seven miles away, possibly beaten and robbed.
Inside the brothel we found supporting evidence, a portrait of a girl named Sunny.
Melvin Dummar: "Why we want to reopen this case is because I believe what's right is right."
The woman who owned Cottontail Ranch is dead. But her husband is willing to testify she told him Howard Hughes was a regular customer. She wanted to come forward during the trial three decades ago, but he talked her out of it, fearing that authorities would shut the Cottontail down.
