Forty years after Geraldo Rivera's live broadcast of opening Al Capone's vault was mocked as the biggest flop in television history, a new book claims the event was far more important than the empty chamber suggested. William Elliott Hazelgrove's "Capone's Vault" (Bloomsbury), releasing April 16, 2026, draws on new documents, interviews with Rivera and the original producers, unpublished photos, and eyewitness reports to explore the media circus, the myths surrounding Al Capone, and the Chicago forces that made the stunt possible.
On April 21, 1986, at 9:15 p.m. Eastern, Rivera gave the signal to blast open a subterranean vault beneath the Lexington Hotel, believed to hold Capone's secrets. The show featured a medical examiner ready for bodies, IRS agents prepared to catalog millions, and a dramatic explosion. When Rivera entered the chamber, all that remained was a single bottle of bootleg gin. The broadcast drew 30 million viewers but became a national punchline, labeled the greatest catastrophe of modern television.
Hazelgrove, a national bestselling author of ten novels and twelve nonfiction titles, argues that the event's dismissal as a failure missed its real significance. According to the author, the vault opening exposed deeper truths about American media, crime mythology, and society's appetite for spectacle. The book contends that the "empty vault" narrative itself was a constructed story that served various interests in Chicago and beyond.
The author's previous works include "Madam President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson" and upcoming titles "Dead Air: The Night Orson Welles Terrified America" and "Hemingway's Attic: Hell and Glory in Cuba and the Writing of The Old Man and the Sea." Hazelgrove's books have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, and have been featured by NPR's All Things Considered, The New York Times, and USA Today.
For more information, visit www.williamhazelgrove.com.
