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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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‘Machine Gun’ Jack McGurn leads list of Top 5 most notorious Mob hitmen

Faced with more than 200 unsolved gangland murders in the Brooklyn area since the early 1930s, in 1940 the District…

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Two popular TV series will highlight Midwest mobsters this spring

The Kansas City Mob is being featured in two popular crime series that will be kicking off new seasons this…

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Last call before the Dry Decade

At 12:01 a.m. on January 17, 1920, “last call” parties wrapped up across the nation, as the United States officially…

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The violent saga of ‘Sally Bugs’

During a rainy Tuesday night in New York City’s Little Italy, two assassins in jackets approached their target from behind,…

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Dueling views of who killed Jimmy Hoffa

Three veteran journalists participating in a panel discussion at The Mob Museum on the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa challenged the…

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‘Mob Town’ movie spotlights notorious Mafia summit

One of the major events in organized crime history, the 1957 Apalachin summit, a gathering of Mafia leaders at a…

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Ernest Hemingway on gangsters

Here’s how the story goes: Two hit men, Al and Max, enter Henry’s “lunch-room” in a town outside Chicago, looking…

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