Crime history – Rivera reveals an empty ‘Al Capone’s Vault’

Published April 19, 2009 4:00am ET



On this day, April 21, in 1986, television reporter Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault on live television and found nothing. “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault” was a one-time live syndicated broadcast that was hyped as a revelation of great riches or bodies on live television.

The vault was hidden under the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, where the Prohibition-era gangster Capone ran his criminal operations until his arrest in 1931. In the 1980s, construction crews found a series of tunnels connected to taverns and brothels.

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