The story of Howard Hughes continues to live on and just as strange and mysterious as his life was while he was alive; it seems to get even stranger after death. It’s been said that Howard Hughes passed away in April of 1976 and I’m not even sure this is correct. It wouldn’t surprise me if the late Mr. Hughes died after this death date and to me that’s a mystery in it self when did Howard Hughes die?

One man in New York tried to write an autobiography for Howard Hughes and had Life Magazine convinced he actually had contact with Mr. Hughes. This turned out to be a false claim and through series of clever circumstances, the man in New York and his friend did get away with this scam for a long time.

When Howard Hughes was reported to have died in April of 1976, this brought in another twist to the legend behind the late billionaire. Melvin Dummars claimed that he picked up an old man in the desert during December of 1967. He picked the old man up near the Lida Junction in the Nevada desert and that man claimed to be Howard Hughes. Melvin Dummars was only 22 years old at the time and drove the billionaire Howard Hughes to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. About 9 years later a mysterious stranger dropped an envelope off at a Utah gas station that Dummars was running at the time. He took this letter to a religious group and it was said that the estate of Howard Hughes was to be awarded to 16 individuals with Melvin Dummars as one of the 16. After the courts in Nevada disclaimed Dummars attempts and said the will was a forgery and was not the writing of Howard Hughes, the billionaires money has yet to be claimed today.

According to the will, Melvin Dummars would receive 156 million dollars from the money that Howard Hughes left behind. While this might be the most famous claim and this was helped with a 1980 movie called “Melvin and Howard“, it is still today the most legitimate claim. I think no one deserves the money more than Melvin Dummars and the courts in Denver now need to overturn Nevada’s ruling back in the 1970’s and let 156 million dollars in the Howard Hughes will go to Mr. Dummars. He deserves the money as much if not more than anyone else on record today. While it’s hard to prove his claims that he picked up the billionaire in the desert back in 1967, there just isn’t enough evidence on record today to disprove his claims. A former milkman from Nevada and now driving a frozen pizza truck in Utah, Melvin has seen his share on the roads I’m sure. He has spent a lifetime on the roads around where Howard Hughes was living and traveling and his story is believable to me. I think the courts need to correct an error in ruling all those years ago and award the money to a man that has probably seen a lot of things on the roads during his days. Melvin is a much older man now; compared to the days when he was in his twenties and working all the graveyard shift hours to provide for his families. I think Melvin Howard is a legitimate person to claim the money from the Howard Hughes estate and let’s hope the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver see it this way. No one can provide solid proof that Melvin Dummars is lying and that’s proof of enough for me, that after all these years that no will has turned up that has been more convincing that the one left by the stranger at a Utah gas station all those years ago.