[a fool in paradise]

The book says eight years before his "death," Hughes substituted a Las Vegas derelict for himself and escaped his identity yet continued to operate his business affairs until his stand-in died and his family overturned his famous will in court. It says Hughes spent his exile in the Panama Canal Zone, the Florida Panhandle, Arizona and Alabama in the privacy he craved. He assumed the identity of aircraft maintenance supervisor Verner "Nik" Nicely, the name of a real person who conveniently disappeared while working with or for the CIA in Panama.

Believe it... or not!

[JennysCool]

"Later in their life together, Eva would think back on that handsome sophisticate and wonder how he turned into the naked man running through the woods of Alabama, erecting voodoo icons on stakes by the trees that they planted on their property, but that comes later."

Yes, yes. It always seems to, doesn't it?

[Deb]

What a pathetic pile of crap.

[Dem Guard]

"Then Musick accompanied her to the Gulf of Mexico to distribute her husband's ashes."

It would have been nice to have been able to do a DNA test. I wonder if any of his belongings from this time are still around?

[JRandomFreeper]

Anyone that could pull off the Glomar Explorer caper is very much able to do something like this. Whether it happened or not, is unknowable.

/johnny

[fish hawk]

I saw Elvis just the other day here on Maui. It was by one of the water falls on the way down to Hana. He looked a lot different but what gave him away was when I gave him a mountain apple he said “ thank you, thank you very much”.

[presently no screen name]

I guess to know these answers, I’d have to buy the book
What’s a ‘Mormon will’? How can he be screw out of his own money?

Me thinks she married a hobo impostor, claiming to be HH.

[Retired Greyhound]

I’ll believe just about anything these days.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Eva could just as well have married Elvis. Why did she choose Howard Hughes?

[SunkenCiv]

The book says eight years before his "death," Hughes substituted a Las Vegas derelict for himself and escaped his identity yet continued to operate his business affairs until his stand-in died and his family overturned his famous will in court. It says Hughes spent his exile in the Panama Canal Zone, the Florida Panhandle, Arizona and Alabama in the privacy he craved. He assumed the identity of aircraft maintenance supervisor Verner "Nik" Nicely, the name of a real person who conveniently disappeared while working with or for the CIA in Panama... Hughes died in 2001, at age 96, according to the book. Hughes had lost access to his fortune but won the heart of a woman, married her and stayed married 31 years until his death, according to the book. The wife, Eva McLelland, who died last year, told her story to Mark Musick, who has been documenting this off-road saga for almost a decade. Wellman wrote the book for him.

Article also sez the author is "not a nut".

[tlb]

Howard Hughes is alive and well
If I know’d where he was I still wouldn’t tell.
I’d be a fool to play hide and seek
With the man that signed my check last week.

-Sonny Hall (1971