Guido Robert Deiro points to an old photo of the North Las Vegas Airport during an interview Wednesday at his home. Deiro claims that for about 18 months in the late 1960s, he flew in and out of the airport with billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Melvin Dummar 61-year-old claims he picked up Howard Hughes in the desert six miles south of the Cottontail Ranch in December 1967 Click image for enlargement.

Guido Robert Deiro said the first time he flew Howard Hughes to a Nevada brothel, it began with a phone call from an aide to the reclusive billionaire.

It was the spring of 1967, and Deiro was working at what is now North Las Vegas Airport as director of aviation facilities for Hughes Tool Company in Nevada.

Deiro said all the aide told him was when to be ready, which aviation map to bring, and how much fuel he would need.

Over the next year or so, Deiro said, he was Hughes' pilot on more than a half dozen business-related scouting missions and secret nighttime jaunts to two Nevada brothels.

Every flight was a round trip for Hughes, save for one.

Sometime between Christmas and New Year's 1967, Deiro said, he flew Hughes to the Cottontail Ranch about 160 miles northwest of Las Vegas, only to have the eccentric billionaire disappear from the bordello in the middle of the night.

Deiro said all he remembers is dozing off in a booth in the brothel's kitchen and being awakened several hours later by a maid who told him he had to leave.

Deiro said he asked about Mr. Hughes, and the woman told him, "He left a long time ago."

"I was unceremoniously shown out," said Deiro, now 68. "I get back in the airplane (to fly back to Las Vegas), and I figure I'm fired."

Deiro's account is breathing new life into the story of Melvin Dummar, the 61-year-old frozen-meat delivery man from Utah who claims to have rescued Hughes in the desert six miles south of the Cottontail Ranch in late December 1967.

Dummar is back in the news, thanks to a 2005 book that supports his claims and a federal lawsuit he filed this month for the $156 million he insists Hughes left to him in a will that mysteriously appeared after the billionaire's death in 1976.

Deiro is happy to help.

"I look forward to being deposed. I want to get the truth out there," he said. "I'm not passing judgment on the validity of the Mormon Will, but I can tell you unequivocally that Melvin Dummar picked up Howard Hughes in the desert and dropped him off (in Las Vegas).

"This is not about me. I don't have a dog in this fight."

Deiro is perhaps best known in Las Vegas for his work in the real-estate auction and brokerage business, which is where he made his fortune. But in 1966, he was an aviation-crazy 29-year-old working at the North Las Vegas Air Terminal, which was about to be purchased by the Hughes Tool Company.

Many people think Howard Hughes came to Las Vegas to buy up hotel-casinos, but Deiro said that wasn't it at all.

"The casinos were just a convenient place for him to deposit his money from the sale of TWA."

What Hughes really hoped to do was turn Las Vegas into an international gateway for a yet-to-be-developed supersonic passenger jet, Deiro said.

"He wanted the average citizen to be able to fly to the Far East or Europe in a matter of hours. That was his dream. That's what he was doing here."

Deiro said Hughes employed him to scout possible runway locations for supersonic airliners.

At the time, Deiro was working out of an office next to the taxiway at the North Las Vegas Airport and living in a room at the Sky Riders Inn, a motel on the airport property with an airplane-shaped swimming pool.

The airport was surrounded by mostly empty land back then, so it offered plenty of privacy for Hughes when he eventually decided he wanted to go up with Deiro on a few of his scouting missions.

"It was so isolated. I mean, Christ, it was 15 minutes out of town before you even got there," Deiro said. "This is perfect for Hughes. This thing is out in the middle of nowhere, and he's got a jack of all trades right there to do his bidding."

Deiro's story directly contradicts what has long been said by Hughes' closest allies, including former top aide Robert Maheu: that the eccentric billionaire never left his suite at the Desert Inn during his time in Southern Nevada.

Because of Dummar's pending lawsuit, Maheu refused to comment for this story.

When asked who else might be able to counter Deiro's claims, Maheu said a lot of the informed skeptics have died in recent years. "So many of them are gone now," he said.

Deiro said he knows there will be naysayers, but there are also people who will back him up.

One of them is retired Air Force Col. Don Henry, who said he flew with Deiro on a few of his scouting trips and other errands for Hughes Tool Company but was never around for any flights involving Hughes himself.

Even so, Henry said he has no doubt that Deiro is telling the truth.

"We flew together for a long time. I was pretty well convinced he was flying (Hughes), but he didn't mention him by name," Henry said. "There's a whole lot of people who know about that and knew he was working for Hughes. That shouldn't be difficult to verify."

Ken Killinsworth ran a gasoline station across from the North Las Vegas Airport, and he and Deiro struck up a friendship. Killinsworth remembers Deiro talking about Hughes during a get-together in the early 1970s, several years before the billionaire's death and the emergence of the Mormon Will.

"Robert told me about flying him (Hughes) up to the cathouses or whatever you call them these days," Killinsworth said.

Deiro said he will never forget that first brothel flight.

He said Hughes was disheveled and fairly pungent when he climbed into the co-pilot's seat with a small black bag like a doctor might carry on a house call.

"He said, 'Take me to Ash Meadows. You remember how to get there, don't you?' "

Apparently, Hughes had done his homework. Deiro said that before he started working for Hughes Tool Company, he used to earn a little money on the side by shuttling men to and from brothels in the area. The flights were known as "midnight specials."

Deiro said the bordello in Ash Meadows was called the Annex and had its own airstrip.

Once inside, Deiro said, Hughes disappeared into the back with Sunny, a striking redhead with a small diamond imbedded in one of her teeth.

But Hughes was not gone long. He came back out after less than 30 minutes, clearly angry and in a hurry to leave.

Deiro said the second trip to see Sunny in Ash Meadows went far better. That time, Hughes was with the woman for an hour or more, and "when he came out he looked like someone who'd accomplished something."

When Sunny moved from Ash Meadows to the newly opened Cottontail Ranch, Hughes started going there. It was easy to see what drew him to her, Deiro said. "She had a star quality about her. She just looked elegant and slightly out of place."

Deiro said there was little chitchat during his flights with Hughes. When the man talked to him, it was about business or what he could see out the window of the aircraft.

"There was no 'hail fellow well met.' I was the hired help," he said.

But Deiro said his discretion was quickly rewarded with more missions and more responsibility.

Deiro said he was called on to play host when Hughes' friends and business associates came to town. He said he was twice sent on flights to Mexico -- once to rescue one of Hughes' doctor friends, and once to bring back "one of Hughes' starlets."

"His confidence in me grew, and so did the confidence of Mr. Maheu and other top officials within Hughes Tool Company," Deiro said.

Marianne Thompson, who once worked as an administrative assistant for the company's airport operations in Nevada, said Deiro became "sort of a Man Friday for Mr. Hughes."

That all seemed to change after the foul-up at the Cottontail Ranch, Deiro said.

Though he was promoted shortly after the incident, his new post moved him from North Las Vegas Airport to an office at McCarran Field.

Deiro left the company for good less than a year later. He never flew with Hughes again.

Deiro said he didn't make the connection between Dummar's story and his own until one morning in April 2004, when he read an article about Dummar in the Review-Journal.

Until then, Deiro thought Dummar's encounter with Hughes had occurred near the tiny Nye County town of Gabbs, more than 300 miles northwest of Las Vegas, instead of in the desert a few miles south of the Cottontail Ranch.

Deiro said he immediately put down the newspaper and picked up the telephone. Within 15 minutes, he was on the line with Dummar, comparing notes with the man about what Hughes looked like, Deiro said.

"That's the only time I've ever talked to Melvin Dummar. I have never met him, and I would prefer not to."

It's nothing personal, Deiro said. He just figures that the less contact he has with Dummar, the more credible both their stories will sound.

Deiro said he has never spoken to anyone about being compensated for coming forward with his story, and he intends to keep it that way. All he wants to do is set the record straight, he said.

"Hughes didn't care about anything but aviation and women, in that order," Deiro said. "What's really unbelievable is that he'd spend four years locked in a hotel suite with that kind of appetite."