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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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Top five mobsters you’ve probably never heard of

In researching American organized crime through decades-old newspapers available online, it’s amazing how many significant Mob figures gained infamy and…

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Hollywood’s ‘Bugsy’ is entertaining but plays fast and loose with the facts

In the 1991 movie Bugsy, Warren Beatty, portraying mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, stands in the desert near Highway 91 south…

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Harry Reid battled the Mob in Nevada before he fought for Nevada in Washington

In 1974, Nevada Lieutenant Governor Harry Reid decided to run for the U.S. Senate. Reid, a Democrat, would face former…

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Separating fact from fiction on the Flamingo Hotel’s 75th anniversary

Much of what Americans know about Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel comes from watching the 1991 film Bugsy. That certainly applies to…

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Anna Genovese’s life examined in ‘Mob Queens’ podcast, HBO series

Being married to violent Mafia boss Vito Genovese, according to wife Anna Genovese in a court filing, “endangered her health…

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Assassination expert says Cubans encouraged Oswald to kill JFK

By 1964, two brothers secretly working for the FBI had been informing on the Communist Party for 10 years. One…

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El Cortez Helldorado Parade 1946/1947

El Cortez, first luxury hotel-casino in downtown Las Vegas, turns 80

In the late summer of 1939, John C. Grayson, casino manager of the Mt. Baker illegal gambling ship, was arrested…

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