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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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CIA, Mob team up to topple Fidel Castro in Paramount Plus docuseries ‘Mafia Spies’

The CIA’s alliance with the Mafia during the Kennedy years to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro is at the center…

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John Dillinger’s wooden gun and death mask preserve notorious moments in his life

On July 22, 1934, “Public Enemy Number One” – John Dillinger – was killed by federal agents moments after he…

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Scarface retains cult status with Al Pacino’s ‘iconic’ performance

Scarface retains cult status with Al Pacino’s ‘iconic’ performance

The 1983 movie Scarface, featuring Al Pacino in the title role, continues to attract attention more than 40 years after…

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Jose Manuel Martinez booking photo

The life and crimes of a Sinaloa sicario

Ten years ago, the confessions of a California-based hitman revealed new information on decades-old unsolved cases and offered a glimpse…

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In the Oscar-winning 1954 movie On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando, right, starred as Terry Malloy, a dockworker who stands up to the Mob. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Oscar-winning ‘On the Waterfront’ premiered 70 years ago, with Marlon Brando as a dockworker confronting the Mob

On the Waterfront, which debuted 70 years ago this summer, is a ground-breaking tale about dockworkers standing up to a…

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Jimmy Coonan

In 1980s New York, the Mob had its hands in everything — even a museum

This is The Mob Museum, but it has never been a mobbed-up museum. As surprising as it may seem, that…

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Mobsters and their four-legged associates: The top 5 pets of organized crime

“You come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married and you ask me to do…

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