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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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Drama-drenched El Chapo trial nears its end

Mob News & Notes is a new monthly feature in the Mob Museum’s blog. It highlights recent stories on American…

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Sopranos

Twenty years later, The Sopranos remembered fondly

Twenty years ago, The Sopranos television crime series began airing on HBO, featuring a fictional New Jersey Mafia boss and his family,…

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Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department crime scene analyst Glezzelle Tapay swabs the ice pick. Dried blood is more likely to remain in small crevices for long periods of time.

Forensic scientists examine Mob Museum artifacts for evidence of criminal past

Forensic science, including DNA analysis and other fields related to examining blood found at a crime scene, is a powerful…

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The rise of Castro and the fall of the Havana Mob

When Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, Che Guevara and 79 other Cuban rebels piled into the 43-foot yacht Granma on…

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The Kansas City connection

In the 1995 movie Casino, the Mob’s control of skimming at Las Vegas casinos is exposed when authorities learn about…

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Hoodlums at the Statler

In the early morning hours of December 5, 1928, patrol officer Frank Osowski was walking his beat in downtown Cleveland…

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Gus Greenbaum, Las Vegas casino operator for the Mob, and his wife were murdered 60 years ago this week

After nightfall on December 2, 1958, Bess Greenbaum, wife of Las Vegas casino boss Gus Greenbaum, drove from their Phoenix…

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