Entertainment

Nevada Man Central To Howard Hughes Inheritance Fight Dies

December 10, 2018 / 8:16 PM EST / CBS Detroit

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Melvin Dummar, a delivery driver who falsely claimed that billionaire Howard Hughes left a handwritten will bequeathing him $156 million, has died in rural Nevada.

Nye County Sheriff Sharon Wehrly (WER'-lee) said Dummar died Sunday under hospice care. He was 74.

1930: US industrialist and film producer Howard Hughes (1905 - 1976). (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

Dummar's brother, Ray Dummar, of Gabbs, Nevada, says Melvin Dummar battled cancer for many years. He previously lived in Brigham City, Utah.

Three views of American industrialist, aviator, and film producer Howard Hughes (1905 - 1976) as he speaks with journalists during a Seanate hearing to determine whether Hughes misused funds from a government defence contract, August 1947. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Melvin Dummar's plight was depicted in the film "Melvin and Howard" in 1980. Mary Steenburgen won a best supporting actor Oscar.

Battles over the authenticity of the so-called "Mormon will" lasted more than a decade.

American industrialist, aviator, and film producer Howard Hughes (1905 - 1976) sits in the cockpit of a plane during a demonstration of the plane's radar, 1947. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Dummar maintained that he found Hughes on a Nevada desert road in 1967 and drove him to Las Vegas. Hughes died in 1976.