MAN WHO CLAIMED PART OF HUGHES FORTUNE DIES

Melvin Dummar died never seeing the $156 million that he argued for decades that eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes unexpectedly bequeathed to him for rescuing him on a desert road. Dummar, whose story was depicted in the 1980 film Melvin and Howard, died Sunday. He was 74. Dummar maintained that he found Hughes in late December 1967, facedown and bloody on a dirt road not far from a brothel near Lida, Nevada, and drove him 300 kilometres to Las Vegas before giving him some pocket change and dropping him off behind the Sands Hotel. The will was said to have also named the Mormon church as a beneficiary of $156 million — a 1/16 share of the Hughes estate — when Hughes died in 1976. The will was ruled a fake.