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Geraldo Rivera uncovered ‘The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults’ on live television 40 years ago

Geraldo Rivera poses on the stairs heading down to the Lexington Hotel’s basement, where Al Capone supposedly kept a hidden vault. Forty years ago, millions of Americans tuned in to watch Rivera’s two-hour live television special revealing the contents of the “vault.” Steve Kagan / Getty Images
April 24, 2026

On April 21, 1986, television reporter Geraldo Rivera completed his final on-air shot in a live broadcast from the Chicago hotel where Prohibition-era Mob boss Al Capone supposedly had an underground vault. With 30 million viewers watching, the vault contained not much more than a couple of decades-old bottles and a cloud of dust. Afterward, sensing that critics would pounce, Rivera went on a bender, convinced his career was over. “He said he got tequila drunk across the street,” William Elliott Hazelgrove told The Mob Museum. Hazelgrove is the author of the newly released book, Capone’s Vault: The Real Story of the Biggest ...

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Father-son crime team tormented Las Vegas over four decades

Editor’s note: Las Vegas outlaws Tom and Gramby Hanley were never members of a traditional organized crime group, but the…

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Latest search for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains joins long list of fruitless attempts

The FBI announced in July that it did not find any sign of the body of former Teamsters Union leader…

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Latest from popular crime novelist Don Winslow delves into 1980s Mafia drama

Don Winslow, an author known to many in recent years for stories about cartel violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, has…

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‘Godfather’ castmates remember James Caan

James Caan, the versatile actor who achieved lasting fame as hot-headed Sonny Corleone in the 1972 Mafia movie The Godfather,…

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Seventy-five years later, debate over Bugsy Siegel murder still rages

As Americans opened their newspapers on June 21, 1947, they saw large headlines about the murder of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel,…

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HBO Max series ‘Tokyo Vice’ explores Japan’s criminal underworld

A new television drama series, available in its entirety on HBO Max, focuses on organized crime in Japan, featuring a…

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Three charged in Hells Angels shooting of rival Vagos riders during Memorial Day weekend

It was supposed to be a peaceful motorcycle ride near Hoover Dam in honor of America’s war dead, followed by…

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