Blog

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 ...

Learn More

As the 75th anniversary of the Flamingo Hotel approaches, The Mob Museum is set to unveil a new exhibit

Ask many Las Vegas newcomers and visitors to identify the city’s origins, and they will say a mobster named Bugsy…

Learn More
Allen Glick

Allen Glick, 1970s owner of Las Vegas casinos skimmed by Mob, has died

Allen R. Glick, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and California developer who insisted he knew nothing about skimming by Midwestern…

Learn More

The story of Al Capone and Eliot Ness is headed for Showtime

The shooting death of seven gangsters in Chicago on February 14, 1929, was “the most cold-blooded massacre in the history…

Learn More

The Jimmy Hoffa disappearance: The 46th anniversary

Editor’s note: Since July 30, 1975, the law enforcement community on the federal, state and local levels, along with an…

Learn More

Recently released FBI documents tie Whitey Bulger to horse race-fixing scheme

The recent release of FBI documents about the late mobster James “Whitey” Bulger does more than shed light on a…

Learn More

Hoffa’s missing body leads list of top 5 Mob mysteries

Organized crime, by its nature, is a secretive activity, with the threat of violence often reserved for those who might…

Learn More

The good and evil of Meyer Lansky

Eytan Rockaway is intrigued by complex gangsters. The film director’s new movie, released last week, explores an underworld figure he…

Learn More