On April 21, 1986, Geraldo Rivera stood in the basement of Chicago’s Lexington Hotel to open what was billed as Al Capone’s vault. Nearly 30 million people watched the two-hour live special, The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults, according to Mental Floss.
Capone used the hotel on Michigan Avenue as a base from 1928 to 1932, per The Mob Museum. The basement held a 125-foot concrete wall that extended under the sidewalk, Mental Floss reported.
Producers used sonar and ground-penetrating radar to find the vault’s boundaries before the show. A permit to light dynamite did not come through until 4 p.m. that day, and Rivera ignited it on the air. An IRS representative also stood by, because Capone still owed more than $800,000 in unpaid taxes when he died in 1947.
Mostly, the crew found dirt and debris. There were also two cheap liquor bottles with a 1948 Illinois tax stamp, which were likely left by workmen, Mental Floss said. “We didn’t find the hollow spaces we were led to believe were in there,” Rivera told viewers.
Dr. Robert Stein, then the Cook County medical examiner, was on hand in case bodies turned up. “I expected to find nothing, which we found – nothing,” he said, per CBS News Chicago.
The special was syndicated to more than 180 stations and earned a 35 share nationally, compared with the 20 share expected, Mental Floss said. Producers said it beat shows such as The Cosby Show and Family Ties.
Capone’s vault was not the only buried letdown. In 1957, Tulsa buried a new Plymouth Belvedere with four miles on the odometer in a concrete vault. When it was opened 50 years later, the vault held nearly 2,000 gallons of standing water.