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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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Organized Crime Roundup: Mobs killed 1 million from 2000-2017, big Mafia takedown in Italy and more

Criminals kill far more people than do armed conflicts and terrorist attacks put together, and organized crime groups and street…

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Mob fixer Johnny Rosselli is back in the spotlight

“Strategist.” That word on Johnny Rosselli’s business card summed up his role as a Mob fixer whose colorful adult life,…

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Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar spent seven years on Forbes list of world’s richest

In the summer of 1989, the world’s most wanted drug lord had narrowly averted assassination, challenged extradition treaties, dared the…

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Santo Trafficante Sr., a ‘Sicilian of the old school,’ ruled Tampa’s underworld for more than a decade

On August 12, 1954, Tampa, Florida, Mafia boss Santo Trafficante Sr. died from stomach cancer. Laid to rest in a…

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New Mob movies focus on women

Women are taking center stage in several Mob movie projects now in the news. Hitting movie theaters this summer is…

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Hank Greenspun, iconoclastic Las Vegas newsman who played both sides of the Mob, died 30 years ago

In the spring of 1952, Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, embarked on one of his many…

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Federal judge hands El Chapo life sentence

For Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the journey through the American justice system that started with his extradition…

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