Geraldo Rivera uncovered ‘The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults’ on live television 40 years ago
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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Blowing the whistle on Mob-connected sports betting
In the fourth quarter of a 2002 NBA conference playoff game, Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant elbowed the Sacramento…
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The Kefauver hearing in Las Vegas
The U.S. Senate’s Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, chaired by Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver, focused attention…
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‘The Godfather: Part III’ is getting a makeover
With a thunderstorm raging outside the kitchen window, Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part III expresses anger at the Mafia…
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Did the Chicago Outfit elect John F. Kennedy president?
A number of authors assert, based on claims by individuals who were linked in one way or another to organized…
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Federal law enforcement agencies announce series of major busts
While most of us are focused on the pandemic and the final weeks of the presidential campaign, federal law enforcement…
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Decades of temperance activism led to passage of Prohibition 100 years ago
All the tumult of 2020 makes it easy to forget that it is a huge anniversary in the history of…
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‘Goodfellas’ still going strong after 30 years
In the painting, a man with white hair and beard, his left hand steering an outboard motor, is piloting a…
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