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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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Capone, Torrio and the Sunshine City, St. Petersburg, Florida

Ninety-five years ago, during the summer of 1925, Florida was in the midst of a massive land boom. Real estate…

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Frank Cullotta

Frank Cullotta, Chicago Outfit associate who led the Hole in the Wall Gang burglary ring in Las Vegas, has died

Frank Cullotta, leader of the infamous Hole in the Wall Gang burglary ring in Las Vegas, died early Thursday in…

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Mobsters in the military

Historically, the U.S. military has alternated in size between small standing armies in peacetime and vastly expanded forces during war….

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Fear City Netflix Poster

Netflix’s ‘Fear City’ reveals how FBI, prosecutors built the Mafia Commission case

The Netflix documentary series Fear City: New York vs. the Mafia tells the story of the investigation and prosecution of…

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Frank Sinatra’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year

In a gift shop at the Sands hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Sammy Davis Jr., practicing with a golf putter by…

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Following the facts to possible Hoffa hit house

In the fall of 2019, as a mentor of mine out East closed in on where Jimmy Hoffa’s body is…

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Culling out the card sharks

Gambling was always a backdrop in the nascent years of Las Vegas, a popular if illicit activity for railroad workers,…

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