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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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Review: ‘The Irishman’ great film despite historical questions

Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is a great organized crime movie. It’s right up there with the director’s other great organized…

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Sixty years later, ‘In Cold Blood’ murders still resonate

As the sun set shortly after 5 p.m. on December 30, 1959, a driver stopped a 1956 Chevrolet at the…

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Is the new Martin Scorsese movie based on a true story?

Editor’s note: The Irishman, a Martin Scorsese movie, was released today in a limited number of theaters across North America…

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Acting legend enhances lengthy Mob movie resume with ‘The Irishman’

Screen legend Robert De Niro, with a long list of classic Mob movies to his credit, has a lead role…

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The Black Sox Scandal 100 years later

It was unseasonably hot at Cincinnati’s Redland Field for the debut game of the 1919 World Series. For the first…

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Mob TV shows, movies put New York on center stage

When it comes to Mob movies and television shows, New York is in the spotlight again. Two television series focused…

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Frank Cali

Murder of Gambino boss triggered flawed theories

The evening of March 13, 2019, the relative calm of a residential neighborhood on Staten Island in New York City…

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