Free Republic

A Utah man who repeatedly made headlines around the world in the 1970s has died. Melvin Dummar was a gas station operator in Box Elder County in 1976 when he suddenly seemed to be on the verge of becoming a multi-millionaire. He was named an heir to the fortune of eccentric and secretive billionaire Howard Hughes. Dummar's name was contained in a handwritten will discovered in the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The document became known as the "Mormon Will" because someone had mysteriously dropped it on a desk at the...

DENVER (AP) -- A federal appeals court has rejected a second attempt by a delivery man to claim a piece of Howard Hughes' fortune, a plight first dramatized by the 1980s Academy Award-winning "Melvin and Howard." The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a jury in 1978 already determined that a hand-scrawled will offered by Melvin Dummar as evidence wasn't authentic.