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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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Irish drug kingpin’s whereabouts revealed through Google reviews

The longtime head of an Irish drug and weapons cartel has been posting Google restaurant reviews and travel tidbits from…

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The press dubbed Jack “Legs” Diamond the “clay pigeon of the underworld” after he survived assassination attempts time and time again. NY Daily News via Getty Images

Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond: The clay pigeon of the underworld

A bootlegger, enforcer, dopeman and erstwhile folk hero, Jack “Legs” Diamond was like a charming archvillain in a lurid detective…

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Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro in Analyze This

Twenty-five years ago, ‘Analyze This’ offered a comedic take on a Mafia boss under psychiatric care

When the movie Analyze This premiered in theaters 25 years ago, it portrayed a Mob boss far different from the…

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Artifact Spotlight: Hollywood prop guns

What’s a Mob movie without guns? Prop guns have been a part of this movie genre since the first silent…

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Dead men walking: Murder Inc. trio electrocuted at Sing Sing prison eighty years ago

Eighty years ago, Sing Sing’s electric chair, “Old Sparky,” delivered its sinister, life-ending jolts in succession to the trio of…

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Netflix crime drama ‘Griselda’ highlights story of ‘Godmother of Cocaine’

The Netflix limited series Griselda, inspired by the true story of the Colombian “Godmother of Cocaine,” tells the story of…

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The Top 5 Mob myths: Hollywood’s creative license drives misinformation

From The Godfather to Griselda, the Mob is firmly embedded in pop culture, which comes with a few drawbacks. In…

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