Jack Sheehan takes the story of ‘Melvin and Howard’ another step as Hughes’ pilot talks and the search continues for girlfriend Sunny

Sunday, July 2, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.

Las Vegas has just three true icons. And none of the three lived here for any great length of time. There's Elvis and Sinatra, of course. Those two no one would argue with. The third, I would venture, is Howard Hughes.

To qualify as an icon in my book you have to be nearly as popular in death as in life. The Big E and Ol' Blue Eyes clearly qualify. Their estates today earn nearly as much money after their deaths as they did in their primes.

The same level of public fascination holds true for Hughes. The billionaire industrialist has had no fewer than eight serious biographies done on him since his death in the skies en route to Houston in April 1976. And last year's Martin Scorcese film, "The Aviator," brought to a new generation of moviegoers the story of the man's aeronautical and moviemaking skills in the years before he settled in Las Vegas.

Of course to those of us who live and write here, the most interesting span of time in Hughes' life occurred from Thanksgiving Eve of 1966 to that exact day four years later. During that period the man who was considered to be the richest man in America bought up troubled hotels along the Strip like a Monopoly junkie.

One supposes he would have purchased them all, including Marvin Gardens and Boardwalk and Park Place, had the courts not prevented him from doing so.

The question lingers: Was the Howard Hughes who occupied the entire ninth floor of the Desert Inn 40 years ago an over-medicated, spaced-out zombie with long hair and long curling fingernails, as so many accounts would have us believe? And was he so agoraphobic that he would never consider leaving the confines of his hotel suite to venture into a world he once held in his hands?

That is a far cry from the description given to reporter George Knapp and myself by two witnesses who claimed to have seen him during his stint in our city.

One is Melvin Dummar, the now infamous Utah deliveryman who says he picked up a battered and bloody Hughes six miles outside the Cottontail Ranch near Beatty on a December evening in 1967, and then nearly nine years later found his name mentioned in Hughes' will. The other is retired local businessman Robert Deiro, who told us recently that he piloted Hughes anywhere from three to five times in a small Cessna, including on the very night that Dummar says he found the billionaire lying prone and freezing in a roadside ditch.

Dummar's story has become part of American folklore since his name surfaced in the so-called Mormon Will in 1976. That document, which was eventually ruled invalid by a District Court in Las Vegas, would have given Dummar a 1-16th share of the Hughes estate.

That may not sound like much, but it equated to $156 million 30 years ago, or close to a billion dollars by today's measure. (Dummar's story gained further notoriety with the release in 1980 of the film "Melvin and Howard," directed by Jonathan Demme, which earned two Academy Awards.)

Knapp and I and a film crew spent a full day with Melvin Dummar recently, and even drove with him to the remote site where he claimed to have discovered Hughes.

Over the course of five hours, Melvin answered every tough question George and I could throw at him, and if in fact he made up this whole story as a way of finagling his way into the will, then he's one of the best liars I've ever encountered.

Our film crew of seven, which was recording all of Melvin's account for a television pilot, found Dummar's account credible. This is not to say that we'd bet our lives on the veracity of the story, just that we couldn't find any leaks in it.

Robert Deiro is equally believable, maybe even more so, seeing as he has no financial stake whatsoever in the recent litigation claiming that Dummar wasn't given a fair hearing back in 1976. And if Deiro is not telling the truth, then he is needlessly concocting a tale that makes him look negligent.

Deiro told us on the record that the reason he lost track of Hughes on the night in question is because he had more than one cocktail at the Cottontail and fell asleep on a couch. When he awoke several hours later, Hughes was gone and Deiro was certain that his poor judgment had put him in seriously hot water. While he wasn't fired from his piloting duties, Deiro never saw Hughes again.

It wasn't until April 2004, more than 36 years after Dummar says he discovered Hughes in a ditch, that Deiro contacted Melvin after reading an account of the events in a book titled "The Investigation," by former FBI agent Gary Magnesen.

Deiro reached Dummar by phone, and after asking him some key questions about Hughes' appearance and manner of dress on the night in question, he came to believe that Melvin's account was factual. To this day the two men have never met, and Deiro says he doesn't plan on meeting Dummar in person until this whole matter is resolved. He says he doesn't want to do anything that could compromise the reopened investigation.

This story is far from over, and other sources with valuable information have been coming forward in recent days. Knapp and I have even had a few leads on finding the woman named Sunny, who by Magnesen's account was the object of Hughes' affection at the Cottontail Ranch.

We hear that Sunny is alive, and if we can find her, she might be the one missing puzzle piece in solving this intriguing mystery.

Las Vegans can expect to learn much more about one of their most important icons in the ensuing weeks and months. In a city which seems to treasure its present-day activities and drool over its future, it's nice when we can occasionally look back at our past with a sense of excitement and adventure.