Bittersweet Infamy - #43 - The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults

Episode Date: May 1, 2022

Taylor tells Josie about an infamous 1980s TV special about an infamous 1920s gangster. Plus: meteorites, the collectors that love them, and the dogs that don't.

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Conditions apply. I'm Geraldo Rivera and you're about to witness a live television event. A massive concrete vault has been discovered. Some think it belonged to none other than the notorious Al Capone. Well tonight, for the first time, that vault is going to be open live. Welcome to Bitter Sweet Infamy. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Basso.

On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in infamy. The shocking, the unbelievable, and the unforgettable. The truth may be bitter, but the stories are always sweet. Taylor. Josie. Imagine. Hi. Oh, hi, sorry, hi.

Okay, now we can imagine, now that you greeted me like a respectful human being, we can imagine some things. It's all about how you come into the room. Oh fuck, first impressions. Yes, job interviews are tough. What are we imagining? You're imagining. Rocky, a German shepherd.

Oh, hi. He's living the sweet life, chilling in Costa Rica. Okay. Living that Pura Vida. Pura Vida, yes. He's in the rural district of Agua Zarca. He lives there with his kind, kind owners.

It's April 23rd. Very close to when we're taping this. But 2019. But you know, we're taping this on 420, by the way. Happy, happy, happy, everybody. Oh yeah, is that a, we didn't gimmick it, I guess. Nope, for once, it's fine. We're allowed to have episodes that are just episodes.

Okay, that's cool. So it's April 23rd, 2019, and Rocky is sleeping in his sweet little dog house out in the yard. It's got metal sides, like corrugated tin sides and roof. Right, it's a nice effect in the rain. Oh yeah, I bet, yeah. Like being inside a rain stick.

There's a cute letter R that's written on the front of it for Rocky. There's a wooden pallet on its floor that's covered with hay. Real cozy, real cozy matos. I don't know, maybe Rocky has like a collection of little sticks in there or like some black light posters. Yeah, yeah, like Elisa Frank. Elisa and Elisa Frank. Or maybe those like glow-in-the-dark plastic stickers.

The climate stickers, yeah. I had those when I was young. Oh yeah, me too, me too. So maybe Rocky was just like us chilling, having a little snooze. Yeah. When bam! Oh no. Something hits the dog house, sears through the roof

and lands inches away from our sleeping Rocky. Holy shit. Oh, what a close mess. So close. Rocky of course freaks the fuck out and bolts. He gets his owner's attention. Luis Gamboa and Esmerelda Alvarado. They go over to the dog house.

He is freaking out, but from what they can tell, he's fine. He's a little shaken. Good. A little stirred, but physically he is okay. And they start to look at the dog house and inspect it and they find a seven inch hole in the roof. And down in the wooden pallet, there's another seven inch hole, probably a little wider maybe,

and embedded in the ground underneath the pallet is a meteorite. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew in my heart it would be a meteorite. Ten ounce meteorite. I knew it. I knew it would be a meteorite.

My meteorite sense was going crazy, frankly. I think it was the glow in the dark stars. Off the charts, readings. This is a pet subject of mine. Meteorite hits. Well, then you know how extraordinarily rare they are. Yeah, that's uncommon. We have an atmosphere, folks.

We have an atmosphere one, so typically they all burn up. The other part of it too is that, I mean, the earth is mainly ocean, right? So a huge percentage of them land in the ocean or in other inaccessible areas on the earth. Right, right. And if you think about it too, there has to be a witness that sees it falls or has some type of interaction with it. If a meteorite falls in the woods and no one's there to see it, did it even fall?

Exactly. So to find a meteorite and an object that it has struck is very, very rare, which means that there is a lot of money involved. Really? I guess so, some of that black market space algae. Yeah, dude. In 1984, a small meteorite hit this elderly woman in Georgia. It hit her steel mailbox.

And in 2007, that mailbox sold for $83,000 in auction. Wow. That's quite an ROI. She did not pay that for that mailbox. And it's not even like black market. Like we're talking like Christie's auction house. Wow. I mean, what's the difference to accept a bow tie?

Wow. That's true. In 1992, a 1980 Chevy Malibu got nailed by a meteorite in Peaks scale, New York. Okay. Apparently everyone was gathered to watch like a high school football game and they saw something shoot through the sky and like they could hear the big crash and everyone went out and like the Chevy Malibu was like... That's fucking sick.

Fucking nailed, dude. That's like God's monster track show. Yeah. To me. That was, yeah. That's fantastic. That Chevy Malibu has sent souls for $230,000 and it's like... So when something gets hit by a meteor, it is instantly valuable.

If you were outside and you were cleaning your toaster on the lawn as you do. Yeah. As everyone constantly does. Spring cleaning. Yeah. You're getting your toothbrush in there, getting what comes and it got hit by a meteorite. All of a sudden that's like a quarter million dollar toaster. Exactly.

Wow. It's like being touched by the hand of Midas but he's touching really hard. Just a real hard poke. Yeah. No, it's true. It was pretty clear that Rocky's dog house would fetch the same iconic status and perhaps stop it. Even more.

Stop it. Do you like that? I'm glad you caught that. Stop it. Stop it. So the meteorite that hit Rocky's dog house came from what they determined to be a 59 pound meteorite. The material that makes it up is called carbonaceous chondrite.

Wow. I love that. That is a sexy name. They call it CM2. The CM2 is some of the oldest shit in the universe. It dates back to before the genesis of our solar system. Vintage. Very vintage.

And it is if the sun were devoid of helium and hydrogen and the husk that remained of the sun, it would be this material. Whoa. Yeah, dude. That takes you back. Way back. Only pre-Big Bang kids know. They knew it before it was popular.

Before it was hot. This meteorite though, not only is it a CM2, but it also contains amino acids. The building blocks of life, my friend. It's good for my skin. Yes. Yeah. Rub that fucker all over it. And my hair.

Yeah. So Rocky's meteorite, which is actually scientifically called the Aguasarcas meteorite, which is where it landed, the district in Costa Rica. Right. It's the second largest of these CM2s to ever be retrieved. So you would also think that it would retrieve a huge sum at auction. But no. Christie's auction house estimated that the meteorite itself would sell between $40,000

to $60,000. Okay. It sold for $21,000. That's weak. This is like this last month too. Okay. Well, I guess pandemic belt tightening, people not spending as much on meteorites, gotta cut the meteorite budget.

The war in Ukraine, jet fuel prices. Yeah. It's all happening. You gotta tighten the belt. Meteors are as much as I tried to argue with my accountant otherwise. Meteorites are a luxury, not an essential. Well, you know. It's what I've learned through tax fraud.

It was a hard lesson, but I think I've learned a lot. Yeah. You know what? I won't do that again. So. Life experiences. The real stinger though was the dog house. It's estimated that it was worth $200 to $300,000 and it only sold for $44,100.

It's a lot for a dog house. It's a shit ton for a dog house. I mean, it's probably a dope dog house with like black like posters and like. Let's not get greedy about our damaged dog house folks. Yeah. No, it's true. It's true. According to a meteorite hunter, Daryl Pitt.

He says about the amount that the dog house and the meteorite itself went for. I was personally disappointed. Someone got an unbelievable deal. Interesting. Okay. The mailbox and the Chevy Malibu. Like the mailbox went for 83. So and for.

Yeah, but having purchased having purchased a meteorite stricken mailbox and then just kind of having it, I feel like that would satiate my need to own something struck by a meteor. It's a one time purchase. I'm not going to then go and purchase this dog house and how many people like that can there be. I really need something that a meteorite hit and I will pay any amount of money for it. That's got to be like eight guys.

I don't know. Maybe it's the Christie's auction house thing, but it kind of enters like contemporary art vibes to me or art vibes at all where like things get run up or run down in strange weird ways. I mean, I'm glad that Rocky's okay. Where's Rocky? Show me Rocky. So here is Rocky with his parents and then.

Okay. People parents or dog parents? People parents and a meteorite hunter. Oh, sweetie. Oh, needs a bit of reassurance on account of meteorites. Yeah, he's getting petted. It's so cute. Boy, sounds like things got pretty rocky down in Costa Rica.

That's good. I liked that. It's out of this world, dude. You're out of this world. 1985. Love it. Chicago. Oh, I've never been.

A city where the infamous locales glimmer in and out of existence. Cabrini green one day, bougie condos the next. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And so it was for the Lexington hotel. A 10 story building on South Michigan Avenue built nearly 100 years earlier in 1892. I'm in. Like any building, it had seen its wax and wane.

It's once lush fixtures growing chipped and faded. Perhaps inevitably it ended up slated for demolition before a group of concerned citizens stepped in and ensured the building received historic place status. With that status came restoration and modernization. And so experts came in to survey the property and imagine their surprise when they discovered a walled off underground chamber. Yeah, baby. With electrical wires emerging from within.

What was inside? Right. They'd have to excavate it to find out, but everyone felt very comfortable letting their imaginations run wild. After all, the chamber's contents and indeed its mere existence must have something to do with the Lexington hotel's most infamous resident and one of Chicago's great criminal Titans, Scarface Al Capone. Holy shit.

Okay, so it's dead bodies. It's a whole bunch of diamonds. It's diamond encrusted dead bodies. What else you got? What else could be at the Josie? What's in the wall? Machine guns. Like the old ones, like the Tommy guns.

Yes, Tommy guns. A car, an entire car. How did they get down there? Yes. We don't know. Yes. An aquarium that's filled with live fish. They're still alive and you have to solve the mystery of why they're still alive.

I fucking love that. No, you're good, you're good. You can't top that. So naturally, word spread quickly about this chamber, this vault. And among those who got their hands on this piece of info via a news report were a pair of TV producers named John Joslin and Doug Llewellyn, who'd created a production company called the Westgate Group. John had a sparse resume at this point, but spoiler alert, we'll go on to do a bunch

of cheesy one-off specials with names like Return to Titanic Live, Atlantis in Search of a Lost Continent, and Dracula, live from Transylvania. Okay, yeah, killing it. They dug them up. Doug Llewellyn is best known as a host and interviewer on both the classic and modern iterations of the People's Court. Oh, yeah, okay. And together, Llewellyn and Joslin decided that yes, this is a vault, this is Al Capone's

vault, and we need to find it, we need to excavate it, and we need to be there with a camera when it's opened. Get that dank-ass smell in our nostrils, we gotta be there. Must, mildew. And we can't pre-tape it because that's no good, there's no hype in that. This needs to be live. Oh no, don't, no, don't do that, no, that's a bad idea. We are six years post-CNN, we're six months pre-Fox.

The Big Three broadcasters are losing market share rapidly to cable networks, syndication is on the rise, and everyone is desperate to get viewer eyes on their channel. That means spectacle, it means car crash, it means the rise of daytime talk shows, and it means an audience that's hungry for something they can talk about at the proverbial water cooler the next day, back when water coolers were a thing of metaphor. It's good to hydrate. And imagine the buzz when we crack open this vault to reveal untold wealth, pearls dripping from the light fixtures, gold bars weighing down stacks and stacks of green bucks, maybe

a skeleton, or two, or ten agitators who fell afoul of Scarface and paid with their lives, informants, government agents, what if it were a refrigerated chamber full of bathtub hooch from the prohibition era, or a storehouse for illicit information and documents, it could be weapons, it could be cars, it could be booby trapped, anything could be inside this chamber. Let's find out together. Josie. This is the story of one of television's most infamous specials and a legendary piece

of 1980s pop culture, the mystery of Al Capone's vaults. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. All right, my dude. I don't know the answer to your mystery, so. Yes, okay, good, good, I was hoping you would. Here we go. I was ready to roll with it if you'd heard about this, but I was like in a perfect situation, Josie doesn't know what's in the vault.

Which is the typical situation. Typically I'm unaware of what is in the vault. This is my odds, yes. So, for the record, and feel free to answer honestly, I know I was like hyping you up to give crazy answers there. Go on record, what's in the vault? What do you think is in the vault? Oh, like dirty laundry or something.

You think like dirty laundry, so you're saying something mundane. Yeah, I guess something pretty mundane, because that would be the worst thing where it's like you hype, hype, hype, baby hype, and then it's like all right, and like. Right. Oh, it's newspapers, I guess. Oh, this was interesting, they found a cat in a tree in 23. Before we have a show, however, we need a host. Oh, shit.

We need somebody brave, bombastic, and a little foolhardy, a lantern-jawed emblem of American masculinity with the rugged charisma of Al Capone himself. We need Geraldo Rivera. The New York-born and based Rivera was at a make or break point in his career. By his early 40s, he'd been a reporter at ABC since 1970 on shows like Good Night America in 2020, winning a Peabody Award in 1972 for reporting on the neglect and abuse of patients with intellectual disabilities at state institutions. Okay.

So he's got like kind of a background in legit journalism with a focus on kind of, I don't know, being a voice for the voiceless quote-unquote. Right, credible and caring. Yeah. Credible and caring, but also like rugged and take charge, I don't know. Since then, though, he'd wandered toward increasingly scandalous and sensationalist stories and started having fallings out with his colleagues at ABC over creative differences. This came to a head in October 1985 when he got into a public fight with network executive

Rune Arledge over Arledge refusing to air a salacious 2020 report on the relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. Arledge fired Geraldo, and all of a sudden, the formerly secure journalist had a chip on his shoulder and a critical need to reestablish his name in a national context. Rivera would appreciate the comparison to Al Capone, and if I didn't make it, he probably would himself. There was a very famous incident that took place on his self-titled talk show in 1988. A couple years after the vault adventure, where neo-nazis and civil rights activists got into a physical brawl with fists and chairs flying, leading to Geraldo's nose getting broken on camera.

Oh, shit. Another big bloody mess. Yeah, ratings grabber. Exactly that. They ran the clip endlessly, right? Yeah. I found a clip of him describing the incident to the archive of American television in a way that I think tells a lot about the man and his own self-concept. Okay, yeah, yeah, this is good. This is good.

Quote, I have to tell you, at that point I was actively, I've always been a brawler. A street person. I always thought that that was my great strength. The source of my physical courage was I had more fights than Jerry Clooney. He was the heavyweight champ on television. I just styled myself as a kind of a wise guy at the time, and I was a boxer in training. So I had an attitude and almost a knowledge that Push was going to come to shove that

something was going to happen, because I remember I wore my combat boots on that particular program. Jesus Christ. I wore my combat boots, and I specifically told the guards what I told every cameraman I've ever worked with, don't interrupt the fight unless I'm losing. Oh my God. Also, but kind of gross because he's like putting together these groups, these contentious groups on purpose, and he's like, there's going to be combat boots, you know? Well, the way that he tells it, he claims that he's doing a service by shining light

on this dark corner of da-da-da-da-da. It sounds like Jerry Springer, where it's like contentious for the sake of entertainment. Which we do all the time still, just in different, we typically don't do it in talk shows anymore. Not popularly, at least. In the same interview among his hobbies, Geraldo enumerates racing sailboats, having perilous adventures, checking the wild. I never knew, I never really knew. I didn't watch any of his shows really, but like-

No, me too. The space that he takes up in my cultural encyclopedia is just kind of like talk show- Mori Povich. Yeah, talk show dude, not like super, I don't know, I guess he doesn't take up that much space. So he came into this with no real concept of Geraldo as a person, or a presence, or that he, you know, he had this like kind of machismo gimmick that he does or whatever, because I just thought, like you, I was like, oh, he's Mori Povich, he's Montel, he's

whoever, right? So, that's Geraldo Rivera in a nutshell. A guy who's machismo, self-confidence and love for sleaze and spectacle often lead him into foolish misadventures. This rang true throughout his career. In 2003, he was presenting war coverage for Fox live from Iraq, when he drew a diagram in the sand depicting the positions and movements of American military troops. So as this is treason, he was personally escorted by American military personnel to the Kuwait

border and kicked out of the country. Jesus, Geraldo! This is a legend in his own mind is kind of the vibe that I picked up. And since I've introduced you to one of our leading men, I might as well introduce you to the other. Please. Alfons Capone. Yes!

Okay, good, yay! I'm getting there, don't worry. Alf, so this is, this is kind of a two-in-one episode. You get this stupid special, but you also get like a little mini Al Capone episode. I'm in, I'm game, let's go. Okay. Alfons Capone was born in Brooklyn in 1899, the son of immigrants from Naples. He was the fourth of nine children, the Catholics having historically not been huge believers

in birth control. Wow. And with nine kiddos, it's really easy for someone to slip out and start doing crimes. He got in at a young age with NYC's Five Points Gang. When he was 18, his face was scarred in a bar room knife fight, earning him the nickname Scarface. Oh, cute. His close friends, however, called him Snorky, which means sharp dresser.

Oi, Snorky! Get over here! Oi, Snorky! Snork! Snork on over here! Along the way, Alf struck up a mentor-prodigy relationship with a respected high-level gangster named Johnny Torrio, who had built up the Chicago mob and wanted Capone to come work with him and eventually inherit the business.

Oh, okay, okay. It's networking. You need to strike up these, these mentor-prodigy bonds. Smoozing, smoozing, smoozing all the time. Next time you're at your, your virtual Zoom cocktail, you know, things to keep in mind. Me too. Among Torrio's other business contacts was a guy named Big Jim Colasimo, who ran a fancy nightclub called Colasimos, along with a fuck ton of brothels.

He was known as Diamond Jim because he'd wear a white suit with diamond pins and accessories. Yeah. AKA, he's dressed like a fucking criminal. Keep it down, man. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty loud. Pretty fucking loud. Snorky, though.

Very Snorky. Okay. Colasimo is the one who originally called Torrio over from New York to Chicago to help him deal with the rising problem of blackhand extortion. Have you ever heard of this? Blackhand extortion was a tactic practiced largely by Italian-American immigrants from the 1880s through the turn of the century, though it has deeper roots in the Kingdom of Naples in the 1700s.

Cool. And was also employed by people, you know, pretending to be Italian-American immigrants to extort Italian-American immigrants, whatever. Okay, okay. Basically, it involves sending vivid letters, usually to fellow immigrants, threatening bodily harm if money is not deposited at a certain place at a certain time. And they're called blackhand letters because they're usually accompanied by frightening images of, like, a gun, a hangman's noose, or, like, a grasping blackhand.

Imagine, like, a hand reaching out from the water as it's drowning, clawing for the air. That's the vibe of this hand. It's not a very nice hand. It is not a friendly hand. Long story short, this increasingly popular type of extortion was biting into Colossimo's share of the pie. He brought in Johnny Torrio to sort it out, and now they've brought in Al Capone to strengthen the operation even further.

In Chicago. They pulled him over to Chicago. Yes. So Al Capone relocated to Chicago in 1919, and by January 17, 1920, a lot of boring little bitties got their way, and Prohibition became the national law of the land, a.k.a. no more booze. Yeah. That was dumb.

There's a great clip in the Capone, in the mystery of Al Capone's vaults of just this, like, whatever your cartoon version of a spinster who advocates for Prohibition is, like, thin, yes, wagging finger, and her quote was, alcohol is hindering the coming of world peace because it is befuddling the thinking of humanity. Wow, dude. Or it's, like, letting everybody chill out and have a good time. I don't know. Leave some room for the Holy Spirit, Josie.

We've all forgotten what's really important. I mean, it's so different saying, like, drink less alcohol should be used in moderation versus, like, no alcohol, nowhere, anytime. That's what we're getting. We're getting no alcohol anywhere, anytime. Although Chicago is very against this, I think, like, four out of five Chicagoans voted against Prohibition. Well, they're a stronghold of, like, anti-Prohibition and speakeasy style and stuff like that.

I guess many, many urban senators were, but Chicago kind of sticks out in my head. Well, let me tell you all about it. Okay. Wait, let me tell you, as well, that in high school, Chelsea Rose and I and our other friend, Izzy, so high school friends and I threw a Prohibition-themed party. Oh, wow, flapping it up. Particularly Sly because none of us were 21. So the theme of the party was bring your own booze, those who are restricted to drink.

So people, like, just brought their own shit and it was part of the costume. That's hilarious. I love it. It was cute. Yeah. And we dressed, like, 1920s style and stuff. And I think we had some booze in, like, an old suitcase and stuff like that. Oh, I love it.

So this is just, you're getting, like, the podcast length reiteration of that party today. Yes. Thank you. No prob. By coincidence, the Declaration of Prohibition happened on January 17th, 1920, which was Al Capone's 21st birthday. So Al Capone, a law-abiding citizen, would not surely touch a drop of alcohol. Oh, yeah, that's true.

That's true. That's gotta burn. The Chicago outfit, as they're commonly known, this combo of Capone, Torio, and Colossimo, or they're like, they're the, whatever it was before the Chicago outfit, but this all turns into the Chicago outfit. They were split on how to navigate this new rule. Torio and Capone instantly saw the potential for profit in bootlegging alcohol, while Diamond Jim was keen to keep things going as they were, especially since he was already making

plenty of money with his brothels. And the diamonds. Yes. He was, when you're already in Diamond Cuff Links, I don't know. Like I say, let's not get greedy over our damaged dog houses, folks. Diamond Jim was already making plenty of money with his brothels, and he also had just broken up with his wife and married a younger woman. The general perception of him was that he was picking the wrong hills to die on, and

his new marriage had left him soft and distracted otherwise. Soft and distracted. Neither of which are good things to be in the world of organized crime. I would love to be soft and distracted. That's kind of, that's personality. Yeah, that's the dream, huh? Yeah. That's the dream.

And no need to be anything otherwise. On May 11th, 1920, Johnny Torrio asked Big Jim Colissimo to intercept a shipment at his club, Colissimo's. Colissimo arrives at the club, and while he's waiting for the shipment, he was shot through the window of the club by an anonymous gunman. He died. Oh. Word on the street is that the murder was carried out by Frankie Yale, another of Torrio's

protégés under Torrio and Capone's orders. Oh, okay, okay. With Colissimo now relocated to the lavishly decorated crypt where he would spend the rest of his days. Diamonds. Torrio and Capone. For days. Diamonds encrusted.

For eternity, really. Pattern solitaire, et cetera. Torrio and Capone tightened their hold over prohibitionary Chicago. At this point, Al Capone's rackets in booze, Capone, I'm sure by the way, but Al Capone. Yeah, you might, yeah. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do, folks? What are you gonna do?

Write me a letter. You're gonna ask me if I care. Al Capone's, everyone's getting testy. It's black-handed. It's this vault. Yeah. This vault is making us all crazy. On edge.

At this point, Al Capone's rackets in booze, gambling, and prostitution were earning him $100 million a year without paying taxes. He was, and this is in the 20s. Yeah. I didn't run the numbers on that. Oh, yeah. DIY math, right? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so that's like trillions. He was aided by Chicago Mayor Big Bill Thompson, who's in an open alliance with Capone, leading historians to rank him among the most unethical mayors in American history. Oh, that's nice. That's a studded field. You can get away with a lot of shit if you're a crooked mayor. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, that changed when Thompson was voted out of office and replaced with William

Emmett Deaver, a lifetime community servant who focused on enforcing prohibition despite his personal opposition to it. This cracking down, so like we have finally an ethical public servant in the mix. Yeah, yeah. Even despite their own personal views, it will uphold the law, wow. This cracking down was known in the press as the Great Beer War. Ooh, that sounds kind of fun. No, it sounds good.

Like, I want to be, no I don't, I was going to say, I want to be a journalist writing about the Chicago mob. No. And I was like, nope. No. Sure fucking don't. Oh, thanks. That's a great way to end up in a cement block.

So William Emmett Deaver appoints a guy named Morgan Collins as his new chief of police and incorruptible reformer to wit Capone tried to bribe Collins and Collins met that energy with raids and arrests. Yeah. In 1923, the Chicago Crime Commission named Al Capone public enemy number one. Ooh, put that in your resume. That's nice. In order to escape the heat, Capone moved his base of operations out of Chicago proper

to a nearby town called Cicero, Illinois. He set up shop at the Hawthorne Inn creating a hideout with armor plated walls and bullet proof steel shutters, as you do. He also brought his dens of vise to Cicero and the formerly middle class suburb quickly spiraled into degeneracy as was fashionable at the time. Fun. Very like Hill Valley and back to the future after Biff Tannen takes over, you know. Oh, yes.

Thank you. That was helpful. By the end of Capone's tenure, Cicero had 150 gambling establishments, 125 saloons and speakeasies, and a line of brothels stretching from one end of town to the other. Whoa. Fast work. So you really class the joint up. Oh, yeah.

He's a moomer and a shaker. Why rise and grind? He has that Sigma male mindset. He is up at 3 a.m., cold shower, go for a run, take the Lambo out for a spin and just see what God puts in your head. Yeah. It didn't hurt that as in Chicago, he had Cicero mayor Joseph Z. Clenha under his thumb with Capone and his goons hassling and assaulting those who didn't vote for Clenha in the 1924

election. In an article for the Chicago Tribune, June Sawyer says that, among the violence, a Cicero police officer was disarmed and badly beaten, polling places were raided by thugs and ballots torn forcibly from the hands of voters. Some Democratic worker was kidnapped, blindfolded and carried to a Chicago basement where he was kept captive until the polls closed, then he was tossed out of a moving car, another was kidnapped and shot through both legs. Oh, both.

Ew. Ow. A popular saying at the time was, if you smell gunpowder, you must be in Cicero. I'm going to use that. I'm going to put that in my little Rolodex of phrases. When we do our live show in Cicero. Yes. And even from exile, Capone was moving the pieces on the Chicago chessboard, arranging

the elimination of threats to his power upon his return. For example, a guy named Dini O'Banion, who controlled Chicago's north side, was a perpetual thorn in Capone's side. He also happened to own a flower shop, which provided all the lavish bouquets you'd see at all the many mob funerals of the era. A thorn in his side, you say. Just a little thorn. A little thorn in the side.

On November 10th, 1924, he was in his little hole in the wall flower shop with all the sprays in the window adorning a bouquet of roses. But before he could apply the ribbon, three of Al Capone's guys riddled the flower shop with bullets in what must have been an incredibly cinematic scene of exploding glass and flying flowers. Oh, yeah. Damn. Dini O'Banion was buried in a 26 car funeral with tens of thousands of mourners, including

important political and police figures in attendance. So sadly for incorruptible Mayor Deaver, public perception of the Great Beer War soured, one of Capone's... Because people like beer. People also don't like valance in their streets. One of Capone's chief allies, corrupt former mayor Big Bill Thompson, was reelected to the office. Whoa, non-consecutive term, shit dog.

Yeah, Grover Cleveland, baby, let's go. Yeah. You're so smart. I am a intelligent young man. Al Capone and Johnny Torrio returned to Chicago and expanded aggressively. This didn't come without attrition. At one point, Capone's car was sprayed with bullets and his chauffeur seriously wounded. In response, Capone got a bulletproof Cadillac and a new chauffeur who was promptly abducted,

tortured and murdered. Oh, God. You gotta check these glass door reviews. Yeah. And he wasn't the only one, Capone's mentor and boss, Johnny Torrio, was returning from a shopping trip with his wife, Anna, when outside his apartment complex, a limo pulled up and opened fire. He was hit three times in the jaw, chest and groin.

The hit man left the limo to administer the coup de gras, but when he placed his gun against Torrio's head, it was empty, so it didn't fire. Yeah. Torrio survived the attempt on his life, but was badly shaken. I bet. Yeah. He was reacted, perhaps. I don't know.

Gun to your head. Click. That'll shake you up. Mm-hmm. And he took it as a sign to retire. He handed his entire stake in the business to a 26-year-old Capone, who is now officially the most powerful criminal in Chicago other than the mayor. What a baby.

Damn, 26. You know, he's a young little baby, doing young little baby things with a lot of money and power. Mm-hmm. In 1927, Capone took over the Lexington Hotel. Here we go. Here we go. Where we find ourselves.

Here we are. With the man himself, as well as his bodyguards, enforcers, employees, and malls settling in for the next half a decade. This would mark the height of Capone's power and popularity, with Capone cultivating the Robin Hood-like image of an affable man who stole from the rich or otherwise deserving and invested money in matters of community concern. He tipped generously, he influenced milk dating ordinances, like you need to put labels on dairy that notes the expiry date, because people are getting sick from spoiled milk.

Dude, that's such like a hangover thing, hanging with his birds in the kitchen being like, you know, I really gotta put this, this should be illegal, this bullshit. And then- It was very popular. And then it happens. Are you anti-milk dating? Is this where we break up? You know, my friend, I date my milk all day long, down to the second.

I'm totally fine with that. But I'm just saying, for Al Capone, who could do any bullshit he wanted, he's like, fuck, this milk is sour, disgusting, we should date it. How about this? How about this? He bought baseball tickets for Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts come to the sack, but yeah, true. He played Santa, sometimes.

Come on, good guy. Okay, okay, I get it. Meanwhile, Speakeasy's proliferated to the tune of 20,000 establishments in Chicago. And drinking, jazz, and crime were on the rise. I love the drinking, I love the jazz. Crime, I could leave behind. It depends on the crime. Nothing good lasts forever though, and the federal government quickly put the clamps

down on Chicago's most infamous citizen, enter a suave 26 year old special agent of the US Bureau of Pro, same age, of the US Bureau of Prohibition named Elliot Ness. Ness and his fearless band of agents known as the Untouchables declared open season on Capone's illegal activities, raiding breweries and other criminal enterprises and costing Capone millions. Whoa, Ness, Loch Ness. Elliot Ness, if the, Elliot Ness, their cousins, um, if the name seems familiar. By the way, the Untouchables, there was a 1960s TV series called the Untouchables.

It was documenting Ness and his exploits. And the person starring as Ness was Robert Stack, the eventual host of Unsolved Mysteries. Oh my gosh, I know his voice exactly. I put on an episode of the Untouchables. It was decent, lots of identical white men in suits, there was a lot of good slapping. Like a woman slapped a guy, and that same woman got slapped by another guy. It was a lot of like, you told me something I don't like, slap, fess up, which, you know, is what it is.

The talking keeps going, too. Is it one of those claps? Oh my God. They just keep having a convo. They just keep having a convo. This is horrible. Wow, what the fuck? I just got my filling in.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Meanwhile, an agent from the U.S. Treasury Department named Frank Wilson was also making significant inroads examining Capone's finances. That's where they getcha. The taxes. That's where they getcha.

This is the most famous instance, I think, ever of somebody getting caught by the taxes. But maybe it's one of the first, is that it? Frank Wilson is kind of able to take down some of Capone's associates, his brother, etc., before he gets to Capone specifically. But I think Capone is like, when I think of somebody who was like a big crooked gangster but got done by the taxes, I'll Capone. Totally. Wilson, Frank Wilson, this IRS agent, he had a reputation for being a dogged, even obsessive,

forensic accountant, said IRS Chief Elmer L. Irie, Wilson fears nothing that walks. He will sit quietly looking at books 18 hours a day, seven days a week, forever, if he wants to find something in those books. A suspect, interrogated by Wilson, alleged that he sweats ice water. Wow, dude, that's great. I love that. We have like this T2-esque accounting robot on the job now. Yeah, dude.

Yeah. Holy fucking... What a horrible bore, but like a fascinating one at the same time, you know? What a horrible bore in any context, but this way, he wakes up, he has his same tea and digestives every morning, cracks his knuckles, he's like, well, time to stare at these books for 17 hours until the one number that I need emerges. That's amazing. Wow.

Wow. So he's on the case. Okay. Meanwhile, due to a quirk in the law that allowed him to buy property in Florida without disclosing his identity, Al Capone set up a little pietitère in Miami Beach. From which he quietly orchestrated and implemented his most infamous piece of criminality, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Yes, my dude, yes.

Also the name of a February 1999 WWE pay-per-view event at which the big show made his debut by clawing through the ring from underneath in order to disrupt a cage match between Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vince McMahon, but that's not the one we're talking about today, Josie. We're talking about the Al Capone one. You need to focus, okay? Okay, I'm sorry. I was under the stage waiting to break in, so sorry. Go stay in the cage, Josie.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was yet another installment in Al Capone's constant drama with the Irish mob on the north side. You may remember that he had a flower store painted red while he was away in Cicero. On Valentine's Day, 1929, a police car pulled up to a warehouse used by Bugs Moran's north side in their alcohol bootlegging operation. Four men, two in police uniforms and two in plain clothes, drove up to the warehouse and entered where seven men were waiting for Bugs Moran to arrive. Bugs Moran, another good like 1920s prohibition era name.

By sheer luck, Bugs arrived late and seeing the police car, he stayed back, waited, and listened as all seven men were lined up and shot to death with Tommy guns. It was such a graphic slaughter that Bugs Moran broke organized crimes code of silence and said only Al Capone kills like that. On the other hand, one of the victims, Frank Gutenberg, was brought to a hospital with 14 bullet wounds. When interrogated by police, he said, no one shot me, then died three hours later. Whoa.

So he stuck with it till the end? And you know what? Respect. Yeah. No, I was going to say like, fuck dude, wow. That's really, I mean, maybe he was lost of blood really out of it. Maybe he actually thought no one shot him. Maybe he was like, no one thought me talking cloud.

What are you talking about? Yeah. The gunmen of the St. Valentine's Day massacre have never been conclusively named, although legend has it that two of the suspects, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, met their ends alongside Union President Joseph Guinta when Al Capone threw a dinner party in the three men's honor that climaxed with Capone producing a baseball bat and beating the trio to death. Jesus fucking Christ. I'm so glad this is audio.

Oh my God. Oh, that's a hell of an ending to a dinner party. Bring out the piñata, I guess. Fuck. Jesus. That is wild. This, the massacre, the St. Valentine's Day massacre in this warehouse intensified the scrutiny on Capone.

And finally, though ice-blooded IRS whiz, Frank Wilson had an exceptionally difficult time tracking down willing witnesses and missing money. If only there were some hidden vault somewhere, he was eventually able to make a successful case against Capone on March 13, 1931. Capone was charged with income tax evasion for the year of 1924, and in June, this was expanded to include 22 counts of income tax evasion from 1925 through 1929. Whoa, dude. Fucking taxes, man.

Wow. Did you pay your taxes this year? Yes. Who says otherwise? I didn't buy any meteorites. What are you talking about? A week later, operations by Elliott Ness and the Intouchables led to Capone's indictment on 5,000 violations of the Volstead Act prohibition laws.

5,000? 5,500. Yeah. Eventually, at age 33, Capone was charged with five counts of tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. Okay. Wow. In May, 1932, Capone boarded the train to the Atlanta Penitentiary, where he'd live

a life of relative privilege and favor for about two years until someone noticed the situation and decided he needed a bit more structure. So in 1934, Al Capone was sent to Alcatraz. Oh, shit. They were like, this is too lush for this jerk. Yeah, no, not enough infamy in this story. Al Capone sent him to one of America's most infamous prisons in extremely high-security penitentiary, situated on an isolated island a mile and a half offshore in the San Francisco

Bay. Josie, what do you know about Alcatraz? What I know about Alcatraz, it is now a national park, and my half-sister, my brother, and my mom and I are going to swim the distance from Alcatraz to the mainland of San Francisco. This summer, baby, whip-tip. Please be safe, all of you. I know that you're very strong swimmers, however, this is a notoriously hard swim. Yeah.

We paid the Big Bucks to do a swim that's sponsored by... Oh, they follow you around. Yeah, so there's kayaks in there, and they've charted the tides, and they do it every year. And if you don't finish it in an hour, then they come and pick you up. Then when or when is that happening? August 7th. Okay, so right around the time of our 50th episode, we'll have to check back in for an update.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm improving this joke on the fly. Sadly, he was no longer known as Snorky, but as Prisoner 85. That was good, I like that. Capone inhabited his nine-by-five-by-seven cell for the next five years as a small cell. During this time, Capone's health dramatically deteriorated due to untreated advanced syphilis. Oh, wow.

This is another one of those rubber-up stories, yeah. The issue was that supposedly, like at some point back in the day, Capone's 18-year-old mistress, not gonna dwell on that, notified him that she'd tested positive, but due to Capone's fear of needles, he refused to get tested. He went into prison in 1932, by which point he would have already had syphilis. And by 1939, so this is now seven years, at least probably more of untreated, of the effects of this. And like, this is a serious disease, folks, like this disease kills.

Yeah. By 1939, his health was so bad that he was released from Alcatraz to seek treatment. Oh. John Hopkins refused to treat him due to his reputation, so he ended up getting treated at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. What do you think of that? Oh, being denied. A hospital refusing to treat somebody like Al Capone who, like, lest we forget, very

infamous mass murderer, not in any way that's been legally tried in court, mind you? You know, because I feel, now my head is like in it, I'm like playing out these scenarios where like, the hospital staff is like, he can't come here, I'm gonna kill him if I see him. I don't know why they have that accident in Baltimore, but like, yeah. But there's this huge, like, upcry from the people who work there who would be actually dealing with him, and administration is like, you know what, we're just not gonna have this at all.

We're just gonna say it's so sorry. True, and now maybe you're putting your staff at risk by having this guy who everyone and their dog has a grudge against and wants to kill, and now he's convalescing in your hospital ward. I understand that being a reason to turn him away. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I think in an initial response, it's like, oh, well, he's sick though. Like, someone's gotta take care, like, he's still a human, he's gotta get that.

But then I understand all the complications of it too, so. Yeah. Well, he ends up getting treatment at this other memorial hospital in Baltimore. I think he sends them some trees or a garden or something for it. Oh, that's nice. In 1940, he returned to Miami Beach, still ailing, a security guard named Emery Zarek describes him as very thin and very sick. Wait, so is he out on parole?

Like, what's, he's done his sentence. On compassionate grounds, he's really, really fucked up medically, and it's like, he's out because there's nothing we can do to this guy that's worse than how sick he is, basically, I think. Yeah. And we can't give him the care that we are obligated to give him in Alcatraz, obviously. And he spent a lot of, he spent a lot of that last time in his sentence in various kind of medical places, right?

Right, yeah. On January 25th, 1947, so this is about eight years now after his release, after years of deteriorating cognition, Al Capone died at his home in Palm Island due to complications from Neurocephalus. He was 48 when he died. That's a long, that's a long time living in a syphilis, damn. Oh, geez, for sure. He was buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Chicago.

Okay, wow. So that is an abridged biography of Al Capone, with apologies to any Capone heads out there if I left out your favorite criminal scheme, minor character, or gruesome murder. Or pronunciation, Capone. Capone! In short, a man of wealth, power, violence, or as the Italians say, violence, and very much the type of person you'd expect to keep something fascinating in a hidden underground vault.

All those syphilis-preventing needles he didn't take. That's rough. So, Josie, let's check back in. Have you wavered at all on what's in the vault? You were going flop early. You said dirty laundry, I believe, was your guess. Yeah. What, have you had any change of heart?

You know what I think it is? I think it's an entire replica in slight miniature, so that it fits, but like a 3-4 scale. You know what I mean? Right. Slight miniature. This isn't going to be a serious answer, okay? Of the flower shop. It's the flower shop.

Oh, that is... He's pulling a Barbara, and in the basement is the world that he would like to live in. All the little shops and kitty shops and doll shops that Barbara has, he's got his flower shop down there. Interesting. Very true and accurate. A very Guillermo del Toro finish to this story. Let's see if it holds water.

No pun intended. Long, skinny, weird hands. So back in Chicago, January 1986. Okay, we're back, baby. We're back. We're back to the past again, but different versions. Producers Jocelyn and Lou Allen had secured a deal of Tribune Entertainment, a major producer of syndicated content, effectively shows for purchase by local affiliates who couldn't

afford to create their own programming. So when your local station plays old episodes of Save by the Bell, that's syndication. It was very unusual, however, for live content to be created for syndication, making the whole project even more experimental than it already was. This happened in part because the major TV networks wouldn't sign on without first knowing what was in the vault. Yeah, I mean, everyone wants to know, might as well get the answer early. Yeah, and also, like, what if there's nothing in the fucking vault?

Then what? Yeah. Then what do you fill the rest of the hour with? Yeah. Exactly. So people are like, you need to kind of show us what's in the vault. And they're like, well, we don't know. That's the point.

You don't understand. Yeah. We're opening the vault live. We don't know what's in the vault until the vault is open. But to be honest, though, in this day and age reality TV, that is so earnest and honest that they're like, no, we're not going to open it, because you know that today they'd be like, oh, yeah, we know, because I was in the fucking vault, but we're opening it for the first time.

This crew, Geraldo, foremost among them, in case you forgot he's in this story. Yeah, that's right. This is like a big adventure for them, I think. They really passionately, I don't know, they're all very optimistic about this vault, and they're really letting themselves go like, this could be treasures, this could be gold. This is history. We are here. Yes.

Exactly. Uncovering history. We will go down in history. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Either way, the syndication deal was lucrative, and with the rights for the live reveal being sold in over 20 different countries, and advertisers paying 100 grand a pot for 24 commercial spots to the tune of 2.4 million.

And that's 1985, 2.4 million, too. The special wasn't entirely unprecedented, Clark Morehouse of Tribune Entertainment tells Mental Floss, so he's speaking to Mental Floss in the context of this really good oral history, which is where a lot of my info were at any time I coming up and like directly quoting someone about the behind the scenes making of the show, pretty much, it comes from this Mental Floss article, and I've omitted a bunch of stuff, so you should go check it out. It's really good. Yeah.

Morehouse, the year before, a company called TPE did a live special and tried to raise a vault out of the Andrea Doria from World War II. They didn't find a whole lot. What was that? What was that? And Andrea Doria? I'm coming. Don't worry.

Okay. Let me finish his quote. You gotta trust the process, babes. I'm happy, bro! They didn't find a whole lot, but they did a 22 rating, which was very nice, so we were coming on the heels of that. So the show that he's referring to is called Andrea Doria, colon, the final chapter, which chronicles a 35 day, $1.75 million effort to retrieve a safe from the titular sunken

Italian luxury liner. So an Italian luxury liner went down. Okay. Okay. So it's like opening the first 30 minutes of Titanic vibes, kind of thing. Precisely. That's exactly the vibe. One shock me if James Cameron saw this and said, what if that, but Titanic?

And then he puked because someone had laced the chowder with PCP. The... The... The... Lest we forget. Lest we forget. Very important to remember. And I'm here to remind you of the mess you made with the PCP.

All right. When the safe was open, the contents were found largely to consist of $1 American Silver certificates, not quite the windfall producers we're hoping for, but interesting and valuable. And it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. And if the journey is highly rated, then maybe it doesn't actually matter what's in the vault at all. Very true. It's...

Yeah. But also, what's in the vault, you know? Yeah, but the fuck is in the vault though. Yeah. But what's in the vault? And by the way, when I say vault, when I say we've got Al Capone's vault, what are you picturing? Oh, I think the way you initially described it, I'm imagining you go down into a basement

that has low lighting, any natural lighting, and there is a space in this large hotel basement space that's just like cinderblocked. You can't... It's like a small, like a large closet, like a big space, but not quite a room, and it's just cinderblocked up and up and up. And they did some excavation and realized that there's actually, like, it's vacant in there. Like, there's...

Right. Yeah. There's something in there. That's what I see. That's a good question. Is it like a safe though? That's about it. Or is it like a safe?

No, no. It's not a safe. Okay. Because I thought... When coming in, I thought it would be like a Scrooge McDuck vault with like a big spinning tumbler and an iron door. It's not that. And you dive into the coins and then backstroke, yeah.

You understand exactly. This is closer to what you're saying. It's a sealed off underground chamber. I wouldn't even say it's like in a room. It's like, yeah, you got to go through a gas of basement, but then it's like there's more tunnel-y shit, a lot of dirt, so they've excavated. But it's hard to say because they make clear throughout. We excavated a fuck ton of dirt.

And I know you're sitting there on the couch at home being like, you know, yeah, of course you found dirt. You're digging through a wall. But we want you to know there was so much dirt. You don't understand how much dirt we've excavated, folks. We have been up to our necks in dirt for days. We are bored of it. We are sick of it.

The smell of it, like they didn't say this, but this is what I got from the town. Specifically suggested city of Chicago cultural historian Tim Samuelson in the same mental and philosophical history. He appears in the special, and he's on deck to kind of verify whatever they find and give them kind of some pointers. And he suggests to them that he says it may be what's known as a sidewalk fault, quote. It was common practice in the late 19th century to build out underneath a sidewalk and have doorways leading to the space.

So this space is actually underneath a sidewalk, so they have to be really careful when they're excavating it because there's a sidewalk above it. Right, okay. This is could have storage, load packages, that kind of thing. They'd start to leak and get sealed up with brick, concrete, and then filled up with gravel and sealed over. Right. So that's his take.

That's his, like, he was the voice of realism, put it that way. Right, he's like, remember all that dirt you excavated? There's more dirt in there. Yeah. Yeah, so you just get rid of it. Yes, exactly. And so they were like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, next, next, next, who's next? We have for a speaker in our episode, yeah.

So Tim is saying from the start, this is a Chicago sidewalk fault, I don't think there's anything in there. Um, Geraldo says, I was reasonably sure we would find either guns or money or dead bodies. I was pretty confident something was in there. I was pretty confident that was millions, trillions of dollars of diamonds. Pretty just, pretty confident on that one, yeah. But the world needs people like that too, I think. Maybe not this specific guy, but people who are optimistic.

We need the viewpoint. We need the optimism. Yes. That's true. The interview in entertainment was not able to ascertain whether he has any relation to Sheldon Cooper of the Big Bang Theory. Okay. Named after?

I don't know, but no, I don't know. He says, Geraldo was a believer, I was never a believer or a non-believer. I just believed we had a good television show. So everyone is getting more and more amped, especially as they start interviewing all of these firsthand witnesses and primary sources from Capone's past. At one point they called Tim Samuelson, this Chicago historian, to tell him that they found a torture chamber, but when he arrives, it's a fuse box. I mean, anything's a torture chamber, if you use it to torture someone.

Listen. Anything's a toy if you play with it, yeah. Yeah, that's true. I mean, baseball bat, case in point. Jesus. Oh. Sorry. They call in a psychic named Irene Hughes to see if she can pick up Capone's spirit

in the space. Good. Good. Good. That's good. Oh, someone deserves that paycheck. Paul Miss Cleo. That's true.

Hughes, by the way, was a famous TV psychic of the era, so sort of a Miss Cleo of her era. Oh, cute. Frequently appearing on the Merve Griffin show and counted among her famous clients, Howard Hughes. Oh. The relation. Oh, cool.

Says Tim Samuelson. So, and you must remember, the context of this oral history is that Tim Samuelson is a very dry, realistic skeptic. Okay, yeah. He says, we go to the basement, she walks toward the middle of the wall and says, Capone is behind it in a garden under glass, laughing, laughing, laughing. Now, I had researched the hell out of that building. I told her there had been nothing there but a yard.

15 years later, the city found some old real estate atlases. What was in the middle of the Lexington? A greenhouse. Honest to God. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So Irene, he's, Irene Hughes has convinced him. Oh. For the record.

Shit. She goes down there, she vibes out and she's like, Al Capone behind glass. Under glass. Pheasant. Okay. And then he's like, oh shit, there was a greenhouse in this space or just in the building? In this space. Oh my God.

In the middle of the Lexington. Whoa, dude. That sounds dope, also. Like, why'd they get rid of that? Build a house, civil repute. It seems her to build a hotel that would eventually become one. Excavation was dangerous and exhausting with the constant threat of fire, flood, injury, and or the collapse of the rundown Lexington overhead.

A bobcat mini bulldozer was dissembled, lowered down into the chamber, and then reassembled in order to move more debris. Wow. Says Geraldo, quote, we had sonar, we had vibrations, we had the sort of technology available for pregnant women back in those days. We were taking- I don't think Geraldo's ever like met a woman though, so. Fair enough.

I think he only talks to other men is my vibe. Through their many methods, the team was able to identify that there was a hollow chamber within the concrete mass, though they had no idea what was inside. So having moved some of the dirt and busted some walls to get here, they set aside the last of the dirt and the walls to be excavated and detonated as in with dynamite on live TV. Oh my god. In a basement room.

Oh my god. In a basement room surrounded by water mains and sidewalk and hotel and people. Geraldo is wearing a helmet, like a construction helmet this whole time, right? Okay, okay, I thought it would be a good prop, no? Geraldo doesn't wear a helmet, he has a very suave 1986 mane of hair. That's true, you wouldn't want to cover that hair. We're split in mustache and a chisel jaw, you know, we need to, I think we need to be looking at Geraldo in his entirety.

Thank you, thank you for the reality check, yeah. The permit for the dynamite didn't come in until 4pm on the day of filming and there was always the possibility that the explosion would damage a water main, flooding the chamber and killing everyone on live television. Yes, electrocuting, drowning, whatever you want, yeah. Although to clarify, they'd already burst a pipe filling one area with four feet of water. And then Geraldo split his pants, so everyone's like running around looking for new pants

for Geraldo, but such is the nature of live TV. And so with great anticipation and not a little bit of dread at 7pm central on April 21st, 1986, America joined Geraldo Rivera, live from the windy city, to uncover the mystery of Al Capone's vaults. So Josie, this feels like a good time, I'll just shoot you a little 30 second commercial to give you the vibe of how this whole thing, like this is a 30 second encapsulation of the vibe. Okay.

Garfate's Al Capone may have built it and nobody knows what's in it. Some say money, some say bodies, some say it's booby trap and we're going to open it. What secret lies inside? It may be Garfate's Al Capone's biggest secret and we'll open it on live television. Step inside the vault with me on April 21st. Discover the mystery only on Channel 11, Monday, April 21st at 8pm. He said booby. Wow, that's a hell of a thing to take from that.

That's the commercial. I love the graphics where they're shooting the gun to make Toe and Capone. So obviously, I've watched the mystery of Al Capone's vaults. It's available in its entirety on YouTube, it's very easy to find and watch. How long is the special? It's about 90, it's an hour and 33 minutes. Feature length. Movie.

Yeah. Movie. It would have aired probably for about two hours with commercials live as my instinct. Yeah. 24 minutes of ad spots, right? Yeah. About half the content is a pre-taped, very sensationalized biography of Al Capone that recaps roughly the same beats as the bio I gave you earlier.

The rest of the show is basically a circus in a dirt pit. Oh my God, that sounds like sexual euphemism. Oh God, this is a circus in a dirt pit. We're in another hole, Josie. It keeps happening. It keeps happening! I love holes. Bring me down.

We keep getting these stupid holes. Bring me down. These stupid dumb holes. Love it. And Geraldo is constantly stalling and he's constantly hard selling. He's generating sentences seemingly out of thin air. He must be tightly scripted, but he's like running like a freight train. Do you think he's coked out?

85. I think he's just high on adventure. Gotcha. Good. Okay. Yeah. You know, if he did coke it was just the way that you do coke, you know, casually while you're doing some mining.

You do some coke. Deep in a hole that might be exploded in a few minutes. Yeah. Just okay. Coke, coke, coke. On it. Got it. I'm thinking these randomly generated sentences that you like machine gun fire, there is never

a moment of silence. This is a very difficult program to watch if you're taking notes. Although to be fair, I don't think that was its intended purpose. No, no. It was not to be a historical document in any way, shape, or form. No, I don't think that this was meant to be documented in this particular way. At 10 minutes and 33 seconds in my first attempt to watch and take notes, I made a note that said, wow, I hate this.

I turned off the special and I considered switching subjects. Not because it was so very terrible, but just like the finger strain of covering what I knew was, okay, this is, this is Geraldo padding time until they blow open the wall. Like. Yeah. Yeah. No. I have to take notes on this in case anything interesting happens.

I was livid. Anyway. We're also built, we're built in a different entertainment chamber than 1986 too, you know? That's true. This is back when you could get two hours out of someone pushing some dirt around apparently. So the first fault wall comes down pretty early and not much is discovered, although Geraldo seems to expect this and says that because the chamber is so deep, continued

excavation will be needed, the way he puts this, like, you're not going to see any gold bars right up front, folks. Much however is made of a random bottle that gets discovered. Is this used by Capone for prohibition era moonshine gin? So it kind of feels like they're hedging their bets early in case the bottle is the only thing they find. Yeah. And they're like, okay, we've really got to hype up this bottle in case nothing's coming

after it. Right, yeah, totally. So Geraldo's kind of trot in this sad little bottle out in various interviews over the course of the show. Oh, god. Here are some of the tactics that Geraldo uses to fill the air while the excavation continues. Oh, Jesus. We've got Dennis Sansone from the IRS on site to repossess any items of value that

may be found due to Capone's outstanding $800,000 lien, so we talked to him for a little while. We've got a medical examiner on site in case we find bodies. We've got Tim Samuelson for context. So all these little, you know, people to visit. One scene that you specifically would be in hell watching, Genesee. Oh, no, thank you. Thank you for highlighting. I don't know if you would make it through.

Oh, god. It is the scene where Geraldo tests out era-authentic Tommy guns. Oh, god. The Thompson submachine gun was the first weapon designed for automatic fire. It was designed for trench warfare in World War I. It was highly favored by the Chicago mob, or as the special puts it, as the mystery of Al Capone's vaults puts it, the mob called it the typewriter. And with it, they wrote a bloody tale of terror.

If the Colt was the weapon that won the West, they say this was the weapon that made the 20s roar. I'm kind of into that copy. I can handle that. That's cute. I like that. They've set up a target range on the second floor, which I gather is where Al Capone's target range, you know, was back in the day.

And with the assistant of on-site guns and explosions expert, Sherwin Tarnoff, who Geraldo is just fucking with his eyes, Geraldo tests out the weapon with live ammunition. Oh my god. Fake ammunition is for pussies, like helmets. Keep up. Oh my god. That is horrifying. There's also a long segment.

So when I was saying to you before, like, they are kind of conscious that they have just got to sell a line of bullshit until they discover something or they don't, right? Yeah, there's just a whole bunch of jam jars in there or something, yeah. So they have this long segment about the rail tunnels underneath Chicago and their role in bootlegging and whether they were connected to, possibly connected. People have theories that they are connected to the Lexington Hotel. Dude, this is like before Reddit, too. This is wild.

Yeah, they're not, by the way, connected to the Lexington Hotel at all. There's no evidence, says this was before Reddit. Good observation. The most interesting part of all the fluff is that we get a lot of interviews with these very minor but very unironically fascinating first-hand witnesses. Oh yeah. Which I love that, I love, you expressed it once as like the archival of small stories. I love that shit.

So. Who ever said that? A little smart. Yeah, but you were talking about bar 9-11 in Fort Worth. We hear from Robert St. John who was at the time when Capone moved to Cicero. You remember when he camped out in this little suburb and turned it into, like, Wario Stadium. Just a shit hole. A shit hole of crime.

No, exactly. Yes, yeah. I do remember that, yeah. The guy who ran the newspaper in Cicero was this 21-year-old newspaper editor who's like the youngest or one of the youngest newspaper editors in the entire country. And they interview him now at 85, and he returns to Cicero for the first time in like 56 years to do this interview, which is a lot of, which is cool, right? We hear from a crime photographer named Tony Berardi who photographed the carnage of the

St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Wow. When asked if the experience faced him, he said, didn't bother me a bit. What the hell did hurt me? To me, it was a job. Get in there, make four or five fast pictures, and get the hell out of there. So many suspenders. I feel like all these interviewees were wearing suspenders, weren't they?

Suspenders, loose jowls, frank conversation. He also admits that he liked Al Capone better than Elliot Ness. He stresses, however, that this doesn't mean that he liked Al Capone. He says that he only liked Al Capone as a newsman. Quote. Personally, I hated his guts. I come from an Italian family. There were 15 or 20 million Italians in this country, and there's probably 2,000 bums out

of those 20 million. If it was up to me, I would take those 2,000 bums, put them in Soldier's Field in Chicago, get me another Jack McGurk, and blow them all down. That's how much I like Al Capone. So. A lot of layers, a lot of turns, a lot of twists. I like, it's evocative, it gets his point across. I understand a lot about his values.

He's like, I think Al Capone's the scum of the earth, I'd do him with a machine gun if I could. Putting all that aside, as a newsman, great guy. Elliot Ness didn't trust him. So speaking of machine gun Jack McGurk, who was just referenced in that quote there. He was one of the many gangsters suspected of carrying out the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, only to be cleared by his girlfriend Louise Rolfe, who said they spent the night together at the Hotel Stevens.

This would lead Rolfe to the nickname that lives in infamy, the blonde alibi. Woooo. Happily, Geraldo tracked down the blonde alibi for an updated account. She is a very beautiful older woman by this point, with heavy Lauren Bacall vibes, very glamorous and sexy. She maintains that she was with Jack McGurk at the Hotel Stevens on the night of the massacre, the blonde alibi holds. She's still blonde though.

Yes, yes. I think when you're the blonde alibi, you gotta stay blonde. Or let it go silver, like it's probably like a beautiful natural silver, and she's like, I can't even do that, I'm sorry. That's what it is, it's like a very silvery white halo of hair. Okay, okay, okay, yeah, blonde, aura of blonde, yeah. Jack McGurk was murdered seven years after the massacre, the day before Valentine's Day 1936.

His body was found with a mocking Valentine's card that said, you've lost your job, you've lost your dough, your jewels, and handsome houses, but things could be worse, you know, you haven't lost your trousers. You know that's cute, I like that, there should be more rhyming and murder. It's cute till they leave it at your body though. Yeah, that's true, but damn. Another thing that we learn a little bit about is the organization that's actually renovating the Lexington Hotel, which is called the Sunbow Foundation.

Okay, yeah. And it teaches women of color from low income backgrounds trades in order to get them placed with jobs. That sounds like it should be good. But as Patricia Porter, the 80s power-suited, very stern, very white woman who runs this organization explains, we need to get these women and their families off the system and contributing to the economy. Well fair makes everyone lazy.

In case you forgot, it's 1986. Yeah. Pat also shows us some concept images for the new convention center they plan to develop on the Lexington grounds, which involves a lot of glass and escalators and a women's museum celebrating the accomplishments of women. White women. Well I'm sorry to say that I instantly looked at this sketch and heard that pitch and was like, there's no way this shit got off the ground, I'm sorry.

I have come through this podcast to be able to recognize a flop concept sketch. Okay. A mile off. And this had that aura. More on that later. Okay. Sounds like a big 80s mall, glass, escalators, all that. But with a women's museum, but yeah, like a 1986 women's museum, so who's even in there?

Thatcher. Maybe just Thatcher. Maybe just Margaret Thatcher. All the first ladies, come on. In more time wasting, we dip into a roaring 20s themed safe cracking party that's happening 25 blocks north of the Lexington at the Hyatt Regency. Everyone is in period guard flapping it up and imagine it looks a lot like that party that you threw when you were a teenager, like same vibe.

Thatcher themed party. Yeah. Puk everywhere. They had a real problem with people sneaking booze in. Yeah. Puk in the Model T. It's terrible. Doug Llewellyn, who's one of our producers, who's the one who moonlights as a host on the People's Court.

He chats with Michael Yorgrum, who's brought a collection of over 1600 prohibition artifacts to display. They have a little chat. Doug Llewellyn at the end of the segment says. And I think this is genius. He says, as you can see, he's really into collecting things regarding Al Capone. Just a nice little sum it up. We also get opinions from people at this viewing party and around the world on what's going

to be in the vault. All we got is hyping what may or may not be in the vault. So let's keep going with that. Why not? Yeah. Bones, jewelry, evidence, nothing at all. Doug Llewellyn talks to this one woman at the party, and it's not usually my style to roast random anonymous members of the public, but I'm about to fucking nape all in this

person for no reason. I'm prepared. I'm prepared. So Doug asks her, what do you think is in the vault? And she goes, gosh, I don't know. Time will tell. And he says, take a guess. And she replies, gosh, I don't know.

I wonder how this woman came to be at an Al Capone's vault opening party, dressed in period attire, being interviewed by the host on camera, not at any point having even considered what might be in the vault, or heard anyone suggest what is in the vault. This will have come up constantly at this party. This will have been the subject of every conversation. I love how what pisses you off most is that this woman is not a good party guest. You're like, this is fucking rude. I just find that very unimaginative, that like, oh, I guess I didn't think about what

might be in the vault, but you know, you named like nine things off the dome that it could be. Maybe she was nervous. In my head, she's like somebody's date who doesn't entirely get why they're here, but knows that she gets to wear a period dress that she maybe, she bought it for another party, a Gatsby party. Earlier for Halloween. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. And she's like, okay, another opportunity to wear this dress. And this guy got tickets to this event at the Hyatt, whatever, it's a 20s party. And then she shows up and Doug Llewellyn from the People's Court is like, ma'am, what is an Al Capone's vault? I'm sorry. At that point, you just say bones. Right, yeah, no.

You could literally pull some ma'am. Any noun. Any noun. You're on live television. Camelot. Done. That's a decision. You're done.

Conversely, when another person gets asswits in the vault, she instantly responds, tickets to Hawaii. See, there you go. So there is something to be said for remaining noncommittal as well. There's both options of their strong points. Speaking of noncommittal, while all this fluff is playing out, Geraldo is just spinning his wheels as they excavate this tunnel and kind of getting more and more deflated as they just dig up debris and debris and debris.

He's kind of gotten all the mileage that he can out of this one bottle. Geraldo, you're getting paid the big bucks to keep the steam going. For whatever my personal impressions are of the dude, he's given it hell in the keep and the steam going. Finally, as the special draws to a close, as time ticks down or they found another wall, they blow it up, da-da-da-da-da. Oh my god, oh my god, it's just more walls. He stops a bulldozer by honking an air horn at it.

Lots of like loud noises, by the way, lots of drills, digging equipment, Jack Hammer's air horns. Not a great place to film a TV show in practical terms, no light. Kind of compromises the, I don't know, the aesthetic experience of this Geraldo special. So with all that dying down, because he's honking his horn, Geraldo takes the mic and addresses the national television audience, quote, when we began opening this vault nearly two hours ago, we had no real idea what we'd find inside. As it turns out, we haven't found very much, at least not yet.

In any case, I think that a legend a half century old or so has been resolved. He acknowledges that more may be found as they keep digging, spoiler, they keep digging for about four more days after this and don't find anything, and expresses gratitude to the workers and the interview subjects whose stories may have otherwise been lost, which is fair. He says, it seems, up till now, that we've struck out with the vault. I'm disappointed in that, as I'm sure you are. This is one time in my life that a pot of gold would have been more fun than chasing

the rainbows. They take a class picture with the team, and Geraldo starts recapping the whole special, and I'm like, why is he talking so much? He looks crazy. Is he just like, is he just grief-stricken? Like, what is going on? And then I realize to my horror that he needs to fill the remaining time in the special, and has clearly been instructed to just continue talking until it's over.

So he starts babbling awkward apologies. He's clearly very, very bummed out. You can see that he's a little devastated by this. The oral history confirms and tells that Geraldo really started to lose steam after that first wall came down and it was just more dirt and debris. You can actually hear him say on the special, oh, it's 20s junk. He says that he promised the critics if he didn't find anything, he'd sing a song. So he makes up a little diddy about Chicago to start singing, and then after two bars,

he drops it. Oh, no, he's lost the steam. And then he just walks off camera, muttering, quote, all right, I'm gone. I'll see ya. I'm sorry. Good night. Take it easy. So what we found in the vault was Geraldo's shame and despair.

Is that what was there? And a bottle. A bottle that may have been used for bathtub gin. Right, yes. Did they ever confirm that it was Capone's vault anyway? It seems likely that like Tim Samuelson was saying, it was one of these sidewalk vaults that was under the sidewalk, was used as like storage and shipping for whatever was above it.

And then it got leakier or whatever and they bricked it over. Like that seems like the most likely thing to me personally. But I don't think it's ever been confirmed 100%, but like the second I read Tim Samuelson saying that in this article, I was like, oh, that is exactly what it probably is. It was probably for this hotel, you know? Yeah, it probably became structurally unsound, and so we'll just fill it instead of deal with it. Exactly.

It's not like anyone's going to come down there and dynamite the place for no reason. And then film it on a camera, yeah. So obviously Geraldo is gutted both as an optimist who really seems to have thought something cool was going to emerge, and this was one of his big adventures that he loved so much, like doing treason in Iraq, and also as a journalist who's like, well, fuck my career's over. Right, yeah. I was fired from ABC.

I think there's snobs, and this was my chance to get myself over, and instead I was just the ringleader of this public spectacle that is going to live in infamy as a massive flop. So there's that. The equally morose crew accompanies him to a bar where they get shit drunk on tequila to drown their miseries and don't go to sleep until the wee hours, if at all. And true to his worries, Geraldo did become something of a laughing stock from all this. Yeah. However, whatever was or was not in Al Capone's vault, 30 million viewers tuned in, making

it the highest-rated syndicated special in history. Holy shit. Says Wikipedia, quote, Rivera had inadvertently launched a no-news form of news where instead of reporting on news, entire programs were about possible and hypothetical news. Including this was news channels counting down and hyping up an upcoming news event like a presidential briefing. Oh my god. So yeah, actually I had quite a toxic outcome this little show, in part I'm sure that other

things can, like this Andrea Doria or whatever. It's not like Geraldo Rivera single-handedly invented this. Right. And it's not like he single-handedly invented the 24-hour news cycle, but it could be that people were like, well, we can fill it with bullshit and 30 million people will still watch. So why not? People fill it with interviews with like the guy whose dad ran the telephone company that laid the wires in the tunnels that they may have used to boot like, even though we were

pretty sure they didn't use these tunnels to boot like. Yeah. And bada-bing, bada-boom, and like I said, that's 20 minutes of content right there. Right there. So you can see how this was like an influential sort of program of this type, although of course shit like this has existed for a while. And indeed says Geraldo, my career was not over I knew, but had just begun, and all because of a silly high concept stunt that failed to deliver on its titillating promise.

Tribune Entertainment was so impressed with Geraldo's handling of the vault special, they contracted him to his own talk show, Geraldo, which ran for many years. So he did get a little sauce out of this. He got a little something, something out of this. Yeah. And it was a good payday too, like he was well paid for it. You can now find him on the Fox News Network talking fast, while saying nothing. My shitty sketch radar ended up being spot on.

The Sunbow Foundation ran out of money, sold the property, and the Lexington Hotel was demolished in 1995, despite having been named a national historic place. Weird. What? Yeah. I don't know, that's, I feel like that's the point of, anyway. You know what? Maybe it was the special, maybe it was the Al Capone special vault, and they were like,

we know the true value of that building. You found a bottle. As of 2012, the location where the hotel once stood is the site of a residential higher ice called the Lex. And so it is in Chicago, where the infamous locales glimmer in and out of existence, like mirages in a blood-soaked desert. Fuck dude, nothing. Just nothing.

Just, just a whole, there was nothing in the vault, nothing. Anyway, that is the story of the mystery of Al Capone's vaults, a highly hyped, but ultimately disposable piece of entertainment. Here at Bittersweet Infamy, we would never do something like make our listeners listen for 90 minutes, only for there to be nothing in the vault at the end. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find your podcasts. We usually release new episodes every other Sunday.

And you can also find us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. And if you liked the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review, or just tell a friend. Stay sweet. For this week's episode, I watched, consulted, and pulled audio from the 1986 special, The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults, which you can watch in its entirety on the YouTube channel, More Capital Cities, as well as a KS-TW promo, posted on YouTube by RobertC2009. I also watched excerpts from an interview, who rather conducted with the Archive of American Television, hosted on the YouTube channel, Foundation Interviews.

I read Andrea Doria's Sunk & Ship Gives Up Her Hidden Treasure Chest by Michael E. Hill in The Washington Post, August 12th, 1984, Capone Hangout Revived by Kevin Close in The Washington Post, January 25th, 1985, Pone Hotel Can't Shake Jinks by David Ibarra, Chicago Tribune, April 7th, 1987, Flying Chairs and Fists on His Talk Show Give Geraldo Rivera a Busted Nose and Another Ratings Break by Michelle Green and Gavin Moses in People Magazine November 21st, 1988. I consulted in Oral History and Mental Floss by Jake Rawson, called when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's Fault, that was published April 21st, 2016.

When Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's Fault, he turned Nothing into Ratings by Noel Murray in the AV Club, October 25th, 2016. It's 1924 and Big Al Cicero is His Kind of Town by June Sawyers in the Chicago Tribune, November 14th, 1987. I read the Wikipedia pages of basically every subject of note, including the special itself Al Capone, Frank J. Wilson, Big Jim Colasimo, Elliot Ness, Johnny Torrio, Black Hand Extortion, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, The Lexington Hotel and others. Josie's Minfamous came from an Atlas Obscura article published February 25th, 2022, called

Sold a 44,000 Doghouse with a Hole in Its Roof by Sarah Durn. Our interstitial music is by Mitchell Collins and the song you're currently listening to is T-Street by Brian Steele, thanks for listening. I hope you've enjoyed the adventure of the chase, you know, to briefly review. We found some bottles, we found some other artifacts, the tunnels, or rather the vaulted space did date back to the time of Scarface Al Capone, but I don't know, our seismic or sonic tests must have been slightly arrived because we didn't find the much heralded hollow spaces that we were led to believe were in there.

So what can I say, I'm sorry, I would thank my buddies here for doing the job, thank you for watching, I promised all the critics that if we didn't find anything I'd sing a song, so Chicago, Chicago, that's Holland Town, all right, I'm going, I'll see you, goodnight, I'm sorry, see you next time, take it easy. The mystery of Al Capone Falls has been brought to you by Budweiser, each wood aged for that clean crisp taste, this buds for you, and by the good products and good people at the Quaker Oats Company.