For gangland aficionado , it was almost as good as the Super Bowl . On April 21 , 1986 , nearly 30 million viewing audience tuned in toThe Mystery of Al Capone ’s vault , a live primetime excavation host byGeraldo Riverathat promised to get the picture deep into the catacombs of the felon ’s hotel hideout on Chicago ’s South Side . For two hour , Rivera shouted over power tools , ignited dynamite , involve aim practice with a submachine gun , and tease the possibleness of obtain money , weapons , or the decayed corpses ofCapone ’s rivals .
For Rivera , it represented an chance to rekindle a calling that had stall following a extremely - publicizeddeparturefrom ABC after 15 age with the electronic internet . “ I knew everyone in the tidings business organisation would be watching , ” he told Mental Floss . “ And as the evening wear on , I had more and more of a sinking tactual sensation . ”
Back in 2016 , to keep ( or bemoan ) the program ’s 30th anniversary , Rivera and producer recalled the dangers , obstacles , and insanity of broadcasting an urban archeological dig on live television receiver . If Capone ’s allege bunker hold any arcanum , they would n’t come easily .
Television, Chicago-Style
In the late 1970s , producers John Joslyn and Doug Llewelyn(The People ’s Court)formed The Westgate Group , a production company found out of Los Angeles . At the same time the two were actively searching for programming ideas , Joslyn get wind of a find by mafia historiographer Harold Rubin and Thomas Bangs : Capone ’s sometime repair , the Lexington Hotel on Michigan Avenue , had a concrete wall in the basement that might contain some of the late rabble kingpin ’s possessions .
John Joslyn ( Producer):I fall out to read an article in the newspaper about the Lexington Hotel and how the owner believed there was a burial vault in the cellar . I sat down with Doug , my partner , and said , “ Doug , what do you think about this ? ” He thought it was a big conception . We run it by a pal of ours in New York who was in ad sales , and he goes , “ That ’s the funniest thing I ’ve ever heard . ” He fall on the floor . He told us we had to do it .
Allan Grafman ( Then - Vice President , Tribune Entertainment):It landed on the desk of the president of Tribune , Sheldon Cooper . We were only a few yr one-time at the fourth dimension and had syndicate shows , but doing something live was unheard of . I met with Westgate and thought this could really be something .
Sheldon Cooper ( Then - President , Tribune Entertainment ): We were generate mental object for our station , and to deal across the country . It was really for post that could n’t afford original content on their own .
Joslyn : ABC said , “ You do n’t know what ’s deep down ? ” No . NBC said , “ We got ta know what ’s inside . ” I severalise them no . They would not go on the air without it , but we were n’t sound to do that .
Grafman : It was way too out there for the openhanded networks .
Peter Marino ( Then - Vice President , Program Development , Tribune Entertainment):John die on to tell me about the rumor tunnel that went under Michigan Avenue from the Lexington Hotel to the Metropole Hotel , straight across Michigan Avenue . John mention not only the tunnel but a hidden stairway and three cement burial vault . The centre vault … had electric cables pouch from the top of the vault . Why would there be electrical cables ? Were they to light up a wine basement ? Were body bury in the vault ?
Joslyn : Tribune stepped up . It was a big commitment , to do a unrecorded show and not fuck what ’s in the bank vault .
Cooper : Al Capone was known internationally . You go to Europe and say “ Al Capone , ” and they make a pistol with their digit .
Grafman : I sold it worldwide , to 20 dissimilar countries .
Clark Morehouse ( Then - Executive Vice President , Sales , Tribune Entertainment):The class before , a company called TPE did a alive special andtried to raisea vault out of theAndrea Doriafrom World War II . They did n’t find a whole muckle , but they did a 22 paygrade , which was very nice , so we were come on the heel of that .
Donald Hacker ( Then - Executive Vice President , Tribune Entertainment):Peter and Allan had this crazy theme of doing this as a live event , which was interesting . The hotel itself was being renovated for a female job grooming school by the Sunbow Foundation .
Joslyn : It was a nonprofit women ’s group that trained women in low - income neighborhood .
cyber-terrorist : They had found hugger-mugger passages . So I thought , yeah , this could be challenging . This was long before the History Channel or the Discovery Channel , but it was in that vein .
In 1985 , Tribune consort tofinancea $ 900,000 yield by Westgate that would consist of a live breaching of the vault peppered with documental - style footage that would differentiate the story of Capone ’s rise and go down in the deplorable Scheol . ab initio , the choice of a innkeeper seemed obvious .
Peter Cooper : Joslyn was telling me they were design on talking to Robert Stack . [ Stack had portray Capone ’s nemesis , Eliot Ness , on the 1959 - 1963 TV seriesThe Untouchables . ] I said , that ’s not a speculative approximation , but I really think we want someone who can take the air and mouth at the same meter .
cyber-terrorist : We feel we had to have someone who could handle a alive case , someone who came from newsworthiness .
Giambattista Marini : Having seen Robert Stack attempt to host a morning TV talk show , I felt we need someone who could do it without cue cards , a real reporter . Sheldon suggested Mike Wallace . A terrific idea , but I doubted CBS would allow their60 Minutesstar to look on our syndicate special .
Cooper : I read , “ Well , there ’s this guy who just got fired from ABC , but he make headway them a whole clustering of awards . ”
Morehouse : Bringing in Geraldo was a real exterior of the box seat matter , but it wrench out to be genius .
Joslyn : Shelly was adamantine about it .
Morehouse : Geraldo had done a story about Willowbrook , about mentally challenge kids being abused on Staten Island , that catapulted him into the ABC affair . [ Thepiecewon Rivera a Peabody Award in 1972 . ]
barrel maker : Then there was some sort of quarrel over something that would be on the air in 10 seconds today . [ Rivera stood up for a colleague , Sylvia Chase , who had a20/20story about Marilyn Monroe ’s alleged occasion with John and Robert Kennedywithheldfrom broadcast . ]
Morehouse : It was a hard crepuscle from grace .
Cooper : He was so down over recede his job at ABC that he just wanted to get off from everybody .
Hacker : I vividly remember call his agent and describing what we were going to do and having him say , “ Hell , no . ”
Cooper : I told him to forget them . He ’s out of employment and somewhere in the world . Go talk to him directly .
Hacker : He had taken his sailing boat out and was somewhere in the Panama Canal . I cerebrate we run across in Marina del Rey .
Geraldo Rivera ( Host):My agent grow in touch and said he had an offer but that he did n’t think I ’d be concerned . I asked how much . He said $ 25,000 . I told him , “ Get $ 50,000 and I ’ll do it . ”
Joslyn : We overnighted him all of the research we had done . He call the next twenty-four hours and say , “ o.k. , business deal . ”
Diego Rivera : It ’s a two - hour show , so we ’ll do an time of day documentary film , and whatever happens with the vault , happens .
A Dirty Job
Westgate had roughly four month to complete pre - production on the special before it aired . In gain to getting proper permits from Chicago and permit from Sunbow , there was a saturated elbow grease to get some idea of the origin of the “ vault”—a 125 - base farseeing concrete bulwark that began in the Lexington ’s basement and stretched out underneath Michigan Avenue ’s sidewalk .
Joslyn : It was n’t a safe with a tumbler . It was a large concrete sight .
Tim Samuelson ( Cultural Historian , City of Chicago):What started this whole matter was the fact someone had found a sidewalk vault under the Lexington . It was vernacular practice session in the previous nineteenth hundred to progress out underneath a pavement and have threshold leading to the space . Businesses could have storage , load packages , that kind of thing . They ’d start to leak and get seal up with brick , concrete , then fill up with gravel and sealed over . I have a smell someone heard “ vault ” and it take on a whole raw definition .
Cooper : I remember getting a call from the business coach at Tribune Tower saying masses were worry the street might fall in and multitude would be hurt or killed . Then it was headache over fires . We lead it very seriously .
Grafman : It was a room - up mickle of a building . I think [ Sunbow ] was around to ensure we did n’t blow it up .
Morehouse : I remember we took a bus trip down there on the stale day of the year in Chicago . There was this whole story about an underground railroad running whisky and other contraband .
Samuelson : The traditional knowledge comes up all the time . The crew of the time were really low - tech mass . They were n’t digging tunnels .
Joslyn : building came to me one day and say , “ We ’re go to have to lower a babe bulldozer down there . ” They took the tyre off to make it fit . People do not realize the work involve .
Morehouse : They had done XTC - irradiation from the street level and on all sides , and the result were inconclusive .
Joslyn : We had ground - penetrating radar not to see what was in it , but to find parameter , to see which direction to go in .
Diego Rivera : We had sonar , we had vibration , we had the sorting of technology available for pregnant woman back in those day .
Hacker:[Westgate ] had sonar and all this stuff to look at the sphere , which was quite big . We were sensibly sure something was in there , but we did n’t know what it was .
Joslyn : We got calls from Capone ’s family want to see what was inside . We tell them no . We were n’t going to do it that fashion .
Samuelson : They asked me to come down and what I did from the very start was say , “ Look , I detest to tell you this , but this is a Chicago sidewalk vault . I do n’t think there ’s anything in there at all . ”
Joslyn : I do n’t retrieve exactly what Tim said , but there was marble tile in the cellar area . You do n’t take in holes with one - inch marble . I saw it first - hand .
Rivera : We discerned there was a hollow chamber , but we could n’t see what might be in it .
Cooper : They were doing audience with relatives , or the great unwashed that had been alive at the time , and the thinking was that it might be hiding money , cars , bodies , whatever . It make more exciting the more they talked to people .
Samuelson : They were the ultimate optimists .
Diego Rivera : I was reasonably sure we would find either guns or money or dead bodies . I was pretty confident something was in there .
Cooper : Geraldo was a worshiper . I was never a worshiper or a non - worshipper . I just believed we had a good television show .
Samuelson : They call me once and said , “ We found a torment chamber ! ” I go over there and it was a fusee box .
While construction crews worked to ready the site for a television broadcast , producers keep busy flesh out the taped portions of the show ; Tribune ’s ad sales department judge to convince independent station they had a winner .
Samuelson : They in reality brought in Irene Hughes , who was at the time the bighearted psychic in America next to Jeane Dixon . She was go to endeavor to pick up the spirit of Capone in the building . We go to the cellar , she walk toward the middle of the bulwark , and says , “ Capone is behind it in a garden under glass , laughing , laugh , express mirth . ” Now , I had researched the underworld out of that construction . I told her there had been nothing there but a yard . Fifteen years later , the city found some old genuine estate atlases . What was in the centre of the Lexington ? A greenhouse . Honest to god .
Grafman : Tribune was one of the most prestigious , most respected spiritualist troupe in America , and there were sentence we could n’t believe they were lease us do this .
Morehouse : Some of the advertisers were nervous about contentedness . About 40 pct of it was pre - pink , which allowed advertizer to pre - screen it . We had General Mills , Budweiser ; 24 spots at $ 100,000 per spot . That ’s $ 2.4 million , less the ad representation commission . We took it to the telecasting pattern that January and everyone got into it . We sold all the commercial time .
Hacker : We had to go to each TV station in each market place to clear out a primetime spot .
Morehouse : It was like nothing you had ever seen . We had a Model T , manakin dressed as flapper , and a duad of hombre with submachine guns . We played it to the hilt .
Samuelson : I remember sitting with Doug Llewelyn , and he said , “ You experience , Tim , I do it you think otherwise , but I really think we ’re go to get something . ”
Grafman : Half of it was the excitement of what we were doing , and one-half of it was apprehensiveness .
Live
At 7 p.m. Central Time on April 21 , 1986 , Tribune syndicatedThe Mystery of Al Capone ’s Vaultsto more than 180 domesticated stations . An enthusiastic Rivera put up in front of the Lexington promising an adventure akin to excavate Tut ’s grave .
Diego Rivera : I recall a producer giving me a pep talk . “ Get out there and nail this on - camera open . ” lively programing is controllable in a studio . This was like stepping off the ledge of a edifice .
Morehouse : We had forensic tester in case there were bodies .
Cooper : Everyone had come to see this . Not just here , but from overseas , press from all over the macrocosm .
Samuelson : There was a guy wire there who was sell homemade T - shirts , “ I was at Capone ’s vault . ” But they were used and had sweat filth on them .
Joslyn : We were going to blow up one part of it on live television with dynamite . To get a Trachinotus falcatus to light dynamite in Chicago ? We did n’t get permission until 4 p.m. that day .
Samuelson : I remember early before the show , Geraldo had dissever the back of his bloomers . I do n’t cerebrate they had an supernumerary pair , so they were work around looking for refuge PIN number .
Grafman : We get favorable with the time slot . The week before , Reagan had bomb Libya .
Joslyn : We had concerns about surety . Once Geraldo come off the street and go into the construction , we padlocked the doorway . No one was getting in or out .
Samuelson : There were three of us lined up side - by - side upstairs . Me , because I eff the edifice and could identify clobber , the coroner , and somebody from the IRS in case they found money .
Joslyn : The IRS had a lien if there was money inside . [ After his demise in 1947 , Caponestill owedover $ 800,000 in unpaid taxes . ]
Joslyn : We pull out down the first concrete rampart and went , “ Oh , god . More poop . ”
Samuelson : I looked at the layer , the broken - up sidewalk on the bottom and the slag from the blade mills on top and said , “ Sorry , it ’s all over . ” I see Doug go over to Geraldo , point to me , shrug his shoulders , and then Geraldo sits on a milk crate and put his hands over his face .
Joslyn : We found some bottles .
Rivera : We were finding nothing but trivial things .
Samuelson : He take out out some old bottle and says , “ Samuelson , you know older bottles , right ? Come identify these . ” They were two lilliputian cheap liquor bottles with an Illinois tax stamp of 1948 . Probably from workmen who drank their lunch .
Morehouse : It was just a crowd of s * * * .
Samuelson : They were going to break down a retaining wall with a Brobdingnagian water main on the other side . If they had go against the pipe , it would ’ve flood the basement instantly . Everybody would have died .
Joslyn : No . That was before the show . It flooded about 4 foundation .
With time course out on the two - hour program and nothing but dirt remaining , Rivera blew an melodic line cornet and call off the worker . “ We did n’t ascertain the hollow spaces we were lead to think were in there , ” he told viewers . “ Sorry . ”
Joslyn : He forebode it . “ OK , Guy , we tried . ”
Morehouse : Geraldo play it like a Stradivarius .
Rivera : It was an old edifice . I do not recall revere it would crumble on my head teacher . I was much more engaged emotionally with finding something . Later , I maybe would ’ve liked for it to return on my head .
Joslyn : There was a little confusion when the show end . We had an redundant 90 seconds , so Geraldo babble . He padded it . It was total improv .
Grafman : I think he felt his calling was over .
James Fenimore Cooper : He was destroyed when the show end .
Rivera : All of the construction hombre went and got drunk with me .
Hacker : Geraldo was very depressed he did n’t find anything . My take on it was , it was a great risky venture . People had fun . It was a great two - hour movie with a bad close .
Grafman : Twenty of us cash in one’s chips to a place on the South Side , some honky - tonk , and had a drink or two . Some had three or five . I do n’t even know if we locomote to bed .
James Fenimore Cooper : It was one of the sad evenings you ever see . Everybody was downtrodden .
Grafman : We thought , " Oh , well , that ’s quite a room to go out . " I do n’t want to say we were fearing for our jobs , but we were fearing for our jobs . Until the rating came in .
Made Men
Morehouse : The next morning the teletype machine is crank out the overnight military rank . It did a 35 share in New York , a 70 share in Chicago .
Cooper : In those days , ratings come over these big motorcar rattle off the watch tape in a glass John Wilkes Booth .
Grafman : We think it would do a 20 . It did a 35 [ share , the portion of all televisions tune up into the show ] . It was an enormous , colossal winner . Nationally , we out - performed the mesh — The Cosby Show , Family Ties . I got the ratings and slid them under Geraldo ’s hotel way threshold .
Peter Cooper : To this day , no entertainment program in syndication has ever gotten a higher rating in Chicago , ever .
Grafman : We set a record for a live syndicated special . We did a home video deal .
Morehouse : Some executives criminate me of under - betray it . We guaranteed a 25 share and got more , so there was money left on the table .
Joslyn : Now you do a 2.9 ploughshare in New York and it ’s great . The world ’s changed .
barrel maker : The show play later on the West Coast and that was amazing . Even though the news was out , it still got phenomenal ratings .
Rivera : I know if we find anything , I ’d be the pledge of the town . I also knew if we did n’t , I ’d be wide ridiculed .
Joslyn : We really observe dig for three or four days after , just to polish off the job .
Grafman : We did keep digging , but it was like after you sink a organic structure , just throwing dirt on it .
The Lexington never did get renovated : It wasdemolishedin 1995 . Despite Rivera ’s fear the special would evidence problematic for his career , the opposite happened . In tumble 1986 , Tribune herald a quite a little for a daily talking show boast the broadcaster .
Grafman : We developed a lot of other live specials with Geraldo .
Morehouse : I think we did five . We did one on missing and exploited children that make an 18 share in 1987 or 1988 , and another one on the mafia .
Hacker : We did do other things , but we did n’t spread out anything .
Grafman : We joked there was nothing in the vault , but inside we notice Geraldo ’s talk show . We had an 11 - yr run with that .
Marino : I still hear the great unwashed say it was a great show with a high-risk ending . They always say , “ It ’s too bad that there was nothing in the hurdle . ” My reply is that there was a 50 parcel in that burial vault and the peculiar led to a dozen other Geraldo primetime special , a daytime Geraldo public lecture show that ran for years , and it certainly led to the reality television fad which continues to this day .
Morehouse : About four weeks into the show , some skinheads got into a fight and broke his olfactory organ .
Gary Cooper : That was typical Geraldo . But his ratings were very good .
Joslyn : I recollect one aurora before the show , we were down in that basement , and it was sub - zero . There was a three - legged bozo , a little tiny affair all of three calendar month honest-to-god . A researcher take him . She key out him Capone .
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A interlingual rendition of this fib was primitively publish in 2016 and has been updated for 2025 .
