Shortly after the take-over, Davis and Gay made public a “Dear Chester and Bill” letter supposedly from Hughes reiterating his desire to remove Maheu and ordering the Mormon clique to get the Maheu affair over with as quickly as possible. It is signed “Howard R. Hughes” and his fingerprints appear at the bottom of the page. At the very least, Maheu thought the letter was suspicious because Hughes did not begin his written communications to executives with “Dear.” He began directly with a first name, such us “Bob)—,” or “John—.” Nor did he sign personal messages “Howard R. Hughes.” He signed them “H” or “Howard.” The purpose of the fingerprints was to prove Hughes had written the letter. But curiously, sheriff’s police captain William Witte of Clark County in Nevada later testified about those fingerprints: “From the way the latent prints developed on the three separate examinations, we feel it is impossible to tell how those prints were placed on that piece of paper.” Whether or not Hughes was in control at the moment his fingerprints were placed on that letter, the meaning of the 1970 coup was that Maheu and Meier, the two men who knew intimately the inner workings of the Hughes empire, were convinced that Hughes was no longer calling the shots; and hostile actions taken toward them, in Hughes’s name, made them bitter enemies of the new regime practically overnight.
12/31/1970