Bob M----------- !!!
Lengthy tribute to BOB, this is only a fraction
The purchase helped reduce Hughes’ tax burden from interest income generated by selling his stock in Trans World Airlines for $546.5 million.
Hughes then ordered Maheu to find him more hotel-casinos to buy to further shelter his windfall. Soon after, Maheu bought for Hughes the Sands, the Castaways, the Frontier, the Silver Slipper and the Landmark.
When Hughes and Maheu were finished buying, Hughes’ Nevada empire was valued at $300 million and included nearly every vacant lot along the Las Vegas Strip and 25,000 acres of prime real estate where the Hughes-built Summerlin master-planned community is now.
In 1969 and 1970, years when Hughes was seeking federal approval for airline acquisitions, Maheu delivered two bundles of $50,000 each in cash to Charles G. “Bebe” Rebozo, a Nixon confidante, as a supposed campaign contribution.
Nixon was paranoid about being linked to any gift from Hughes because in 1956, Hughes made a controversial $205,000 loan to Nixon’s brother Donald. Details of the loan were leaked during the 1960 presidential campaign and Nixon believed it cost him the election to John F. Kennedy.
Watergate burglars attempted to break into Greenspun’s safe at the Sun offices to get the Maheu-Hughes memos about that gift. They damaged the safe’s door but never broke it open.
Nixon also was concerned that Maheu had told one of his former employees, then-Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O’Brien, about the cash donations from Hughes. O’Brien’s Watergate office was broken into, but the burglars were caught.
Maheu’s other business dealings included lobbying on behalf of Hughes to conserve Southern Nevada’s precious water resources and stop nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site.
Twice Hughes sent Maheu to Washington with briefcases containing $1 million in cash to secure promises from President Lyndon B. Johnson and Nixon to end nuclear testing in Southern Nevada.
But as Hughes became a bedraggled hermit, a rift developed between Maheu and Hughes’ caregivers, who answered to Hughes Corp. executive Bill Gay, with whom Maheu did not always see eye to eye.
(Hughes’ caregivers and aides were nicknamed the “Mormon Mafia” because the majority were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
Maheu was fired by Hughes Corp. in 1970 and started his own consulting business, Robert A. Maheu and Associates.
In November 1970, Hughes was taken in a van by his caregivers from the Desert Inn to Nellis Air Force Base, where they boarded a jet for the Bahamas. Hughes never returned to Las Vegas.
After Hughes left town, many of Hughes’ memos to Maheu wound up on the front page of the Sun, accompanied by definitive stories about the reclusive billionaire and his mysterious ways.
“In Bob’s darkest days following the Hughes shake-up he had one true friend — that was my father, Hank Greenspun,” Brian Greenspun said. “And Bob returned that friendship to my family for the rest of his life.”
Hughes died April 5, 1976, aboard a plane from Mexico to his hometown of Houston at age 70. Though the official cause was kidney failure, Maheu maintained till the end that Hughes died of neglect.
“My heart still bleeds for what happened to Howard Hughes,” Maheu said in 2004. “I often said after I got off the phone with him that I just finished talking to the poorest man in the world. He was so unhappy.”
Maheu’s remains will be cremated and his ashes will be interred alongside those of his wife, Eve, at the family plot in Waterville.
Other Maheu survivors include his son Robert Maheu of Newport Beach, Calif.; daughters-in-law Rosemary Maheu of Las Vegas and Jane Maheu of San Diego; 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his daughter Christine.
Sun reporter Mary Manning contributed to this report.
AI
