Three out of every four televisions in the Chicago area on April 21, 1986 were watching “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults” as host Geraldo Rivera and an excavation team blasted through concrete walls and delved through piles of debris during a live, two-hour broadcast from the depths of the former Lexington Hotel at Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road on the city’s Near South Side.
Millions of viewers — some estimates say 30 million, others say 60 million — throughout the United States and at least 13 other countries followed along during the expedition to find gangster Al Capone’s goods.
A few empty bottles and a sign were the only tangible effects found in the space during the show. The production — and its presenter — instantly became a punchline or a pop culture reference, which has been featured on “The Simpsons” and Rivera’s own turn on “Dancing With The Stars.”
So, who thought it was a good idea?
For answers, we searched the Chicago Tribune archives and spoke with those involved in the show’s creation — including Rivera and producer Doug Llewelyn.
The lead up to “Al Capone’s Vaults,” we discovered, was years in the making with a variety of real-life personalities buying into the dream, the facade, the hope that the long-dead head of organized crime during Prohibition in Chicago may have left behind money, bodies, or illegal booze in the basement of his former command post.
And if there were a paper trail to document when the fallacy that Capone buried his treasures in a subterranean level of the Lexington began, then the first page might be from the June 18, 1981, edition of the Chicago Tribune.
‘Capone’s old hangout may now be just a tomb’
Almost five years before Rivera fired a machine gun on live TV, Edward Baumann and John O’Brien informed readers of the Chicago Tribune that a huge concrete slab under the Lexington Hotel “may be the tomb of some of Capone’s enemies.”
Memento hunters — many searching for relics connected to the building’s mobster past — discovered the odd structure.
Both Baumann and O’Brien were respected, decorated, longtime reporters for the Chicago Tribune who also authored a bookcase worth of true crime titles. O’Brien was part of a team of reporters that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for an exposé on vote fraud. Baumann was a three-time Pulitzer finalist. Each was recalled as competent, self-effacing and honest by friends and colleagues after their deaths — O’Brien in 2003 and Baumann in 2012.
Harold Rubin — the “founder” of the concrete wall “under the hotel’s vaulted Michigan Avenue sidewalk” — had a more colorful reputation. The proprietor of Weird Harold’s, an adult bookstore, massage parlor and nude modeling studio in the South Loop in the 1970s, Rubin was known as the “king of Chicago pornography.” He scavenged marble from the Lexington after the residential hotel’s final 150 tenants — many on public assistance — were ordered to move out in October 1980.
What was the purpose of the 6-feet-high by 6-feet-wide concrete-filled space? A masonry expert had no explanation for the “sloppy job” that he suspected was “done by amateurs” in the 1930s. A city spokesman said the space wouldn’t be explored until funds were raised to raze the building, which was estimated to cost $1 million.
The imposing 10-story Lexington — with a brown brick and terra cotta exterior supported by a steel skeleton — was created for upscale guests to the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Its construction began in 1891 under architect Clinton J. Warren, who also designed the Congress Plaza Hotel.
When opened in 1892, the Lexington had 370 suite-style rooms — some with bay windows — and public areas including “crystal chandeliers, a glittering ballroom, soaring arches, wrought-iron staircases and a broad lobby lined with multicolored marble from France, Italy and Vermont,” according to the Chicago Tribune. From its inception — 20 years after the Great Chicago Fire — ads for the hotel claimed the edifice was “absolutely fireproof.”
By 1976, though, the Tribune referred to the Lexington — renamed New Michigan Hotel around 1935 — as “picturesquely rundown.”
Still, the shell of the Lexington endured as the rumor of possible riches below-ground spread.
‘It was Capone’s hotel, although he didn’t own it’
The Lexington hosted a variety of guests before its 1980 demise.
Grover Cleveland — the 24th president of the United States — checked into the Lexington before helping to open the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.
A banquet was held at the Lexington on June 26, 1897 for Booker T. Washington, the professor and president of Tuskegee University in Alabama. The Tribune described the affair as, “the first attempt of the colored residents of Chicago to publicly honor the man who has done so much to benefit their race.”
Amos Alonzo Stagg, the famed University of Chicago coach, treated his football team to a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving at the Lexington in 1900.
The Lexington had lost some of its luster by 1928, but gained its most infamous inhabitant. Al Capone, the head of organized crime in Chicago, moved his headquarters to the fourth and fifth floors.
Former hotel employees told the Tribune in 1962 that ‘Scarface’ — not management — ran the place.
A barber chair, private kitchen and luxurious bathroom with a lavender tub, green wall tiles and gold fixtures were among the upgrades inside Capone’s own quarters, Room 530. It was rumored there were hidden tunnels, staircases and subterranean storage spaces accessible from his room.
Capone’s stay at the Lexington was at the height of his notoriety. In 1930, the Chicago Crime Commission named him “chief of gangland” and the Tribune first referred to Capone as “public enemy No. 1.?
He was indicted for federal income-tax evasion on June 5, 1931, found guilty on 5 of the 23 counts against him and sentenced to 11 years imprisonment.
After four years, Capone’s time had come to check out of the Lexington. He was transported from Cook County Jail to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta by train in May 1932, then later transferred to Alcatraz.
In ill health due to syphilis-related complications, Capone was released after serving seven years in prison. He died at his home on Palm Island in Miami Beach, Fla. on Jan. 25, 1947, and was buried in Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Chicago. His body was later moved to Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery.
‘Without his infamous name, we wouldn’t have gotten any attention’
Just as the 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition brought the Lexington to life, the opportunity for Chicago to host another world’s fair — almost a century later — offered hope for the dilapidated Lexington.
In 1982, Chicago was chosen to host its third world’s fair. The hotel’s location became highly desirable due to its proximity to the proposed lakefront site of the 1992 exhibition.
The Sunbow Foundation, a nonprofit that trained women in construction skills, purchased the former Lexington for $500,000 in late 1982. Its plans for the building included 84 units of one- and two-bedroom apartments; an international women’s museum and research center; day-care facilities and a re-creation of Capone’s Room 530.
Sunbow employed about 50 women of color — most heads of their households — thanks to a federal grant. But jobs were hard to come by due to a slump in the construction industry and rules that banned women from private work in the trades set by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act.
Staffers were only allowed to restore city-owned vacant and burned-out buildings. The purchase of the Lexington, however, offered Sunbow its first large-scale renovation and a potential major investment — estimated to be as much as “a 50 percent share of the $6 million project” — by partnering with local firms for the redevelopment.
Chicago City Council approved landmark status for the building in January 1985. Soon after, Sunbow’s founder and executive director Patricia J. Porter publicly speculated that treasures belonging to Capone could be hidden behind the hotel’s walls. Her federally funded organization could not use public money to look for a vault, even one that might be filled with cash, but could raise donations for the effort.
Sunbow’s fundraisers included a $100-a-plate jazz brunch in June 1985. Guests “donned bright yellow hard hats and climbed rickety stairs” to dine on seafood salad served in tomato baskets while seated on folding chairs. The real draw was a trip to the Lexington’s basement to view the recently discovered 125-foot vault of roughly poured concrete. Guests were told money, bodies or liquor could possibly be inside.
Plans for the 1992 fair died on June 20, 1985 — just nine days after the party at the Lexington (though the exposition was not officially canceled until 1987).
Then Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan delivered the death knell, saying the now estimated $1.1 billion exposition was “a bad risk” for taxpayers. John Kramer, general manager of the Chicago World’s Fair 1992 Authority, moved to dissolve the 20-month-old fair agency.
‘We’ll go in there and blast open the vault and see what’s there’
The Lexington’s lower level became national news. Porter, whose efforts to restore the hotel continued in spite of the fair’s demise, was its peddler. A story in the Los Angeles Times called the hotel’s basement “Chicago’s equivalent of King Tutankhamun’s tomb.”
After reading the Times’ story, Doug Llewelyn thought the vault was an intriguing idea for a TV special. Llewelyn was the court reporter for “The People’s Court,” interviewing both parties following the fall of Judge Joseph Wapner’s gavel. He’s the guy who said the catchphrase, “Don’t take the law into your own hands — take ’em to court” at the end of each show.
Llewelyn flew to Chicago to get a tour of the Lexington with Porter.
“She showed me the entrance to a subterranean basement that had been sealed over and we thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s something there, too,'” Llewelyn recalled in a 2016 interview with the Tribune. “What she said made sense. There was no guarantee, but at least it was an interesting theory.”
Llewelyn made Porter an offer after flying back to Los Angeles. Sunbow would receive $50,000 (about $122,000 in today’s dollars) plus 1 percent of the profits from the TV show.
“She was in favor of that,” Llewelyn said.
He and John Joslyn, who formed the Westgate Group together in 1980, decided to produce their first “docutainment” — a television special that combines aspects of a documentary with live entertainment — about the hotel basement with a Capone connection. The cost: about $1 million.
Instead of digging out the basement prior to air time, Llewelyn thought it might be more captivating if the excavation were done on live TV.
But, who would air it?
Llewelyn met unsuccessfully with syndicates in Los Angeles and New York City, before signing on with Tribune Entertainment.
Llewelyn took reporters and photographers into the basement to view the vaults during a press conference in December 1985, which helped publicize the upcoming show.
He, however, didn’t want to host the TV special. He thought a “big name” was needed.
The producers contacted Robert Stack — who played Eliot Ness in ABC’s “The Untouchables” series in the 1960s and would go on to host “Unsolved Mysteries” — but decided a journalist might be a better fit. “60 Minutes” reporter Mike Wallace’s name was also mentioned.
‘I was the most famous unemployed person in America’
Rivera, formerly a correspondent with ABC News, was available.
He was intrigued with the idea of the show and researched and visited locations for the pre-taped documentary segments that would air during the live event.
Rivera was paid $50,000 for his work — roughly $122,000 in today’s dollars.
In a 2016 interview with the Tribune, Rivera said doing the homework led him to believe something exciting would be exposed during the show.
‘There was a high point reached early on, and from there it was like going down a greasy slide to oblivion’
Thanks to a publicity blitz, more than 180 stations around the country were airing “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults,” making the broadcast available to 94 percent of the population in the U.S.
Reporters and photographers packed into a small room inside the Lexington and watched the broadcast from TV monitors.
Joanie Bayhack, Rivera’s primary publicist, described the hotel’s basement as dark, creepy and a haven for wayward animals.
Bayhack’s colleague, Tom Potts, adopted a three-legged cat from the Lexington and named it Capone.
A representative of the Internal Revenue Service — which was still owed $800,000 by Capone — was there. Cook County medical examiner Dr. Robert Stein, who identified victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy and Flight 191 in 1979, was also on hand in case bodies were discovered.
Then, there was Mr. T.
Rivera remembers the adrenaline and cacophony of sounds in the confined space during the telecast.
The underbelly of the Lexington was a working construction site — the explosions were real.
The real problem, Llewelyn said, was the discovery of an unexpected third wall during the broadcast with no air time remaining to blast through it. He said the crew continued to dig for two more days, but didn’t find anything significant.
As the broadcast neared its end, Rivera remembers realizing that nothing else would be found and that the show could become “ammunition” for his former ABC News colleague Peter Jennings to potentially “demean me, or ridicule me for the rest of my life.”
Instead of attending an after-party, Geraldo says he accompanied the construction crew to a Mexican restaurant across the street from the Lexington and did tequila shots. “I was so morose. I was really very, very unhappy,” he said.
He gave one of the bottles to his publicist, Joanie Bayhack, who still has it and a handwritten note from Rivera that said, in part, “It ain’t much … but it was all there was!”
The ratings
The most exhilarating live television event of 1986 was the Chicago Bears winning Super Bowl XX, for some.
For others — it was a basement.
“This show did very, very well,” said Terri Luke, then promotion manager for Nielsen, which conducted ratings of TV programming.
“The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults” recorded a 57.3 rating and a 73 share in Chicago, according to Nielsen data. The Bears’ Super Bowl victory — just three months prior — logged a 63.2 rating and 87 share. Both topped local TV ratings history.
WGN-TV Ch. 9 collected its highest non-sports rating in the station’s history.
“That means 1.7 million TV households in the Chicago area were having their pockets picked and loving every minute of the fleecing,” wrote Tribune media columnist Steve Daley on Oct. 7, 1986.
An estimated 5 million people in the WGN viewing area watched all or part of the show. That’s almost double the population of the city of Chicago at that time.
Ratings of 33.2 percent in New York City, 45.6 percent in Los Angeles and 60 percent in Denver meant the broadcast was also extremely popular outside Chicago.
The show’s sponsors must have been delighted, too. WGN sold out all 12 minutes of available local advertising time and an additional 13 minutes of national advertising was sold by Tribune Entertainment.
Rivera struck a deal in October 1986 to host his own talk show, which lasted 11 years.
For Llewelyn and Joslyn, the program opened the door for more docutainment stories — including ones about Adolph Hitler and Titanic that followed their formula for “Vaults.”
Rubin’s attorney served a cease-and-desist notice to Sunbow and Porter for attempting to take credit for discovering the “vault.” Sunbow — which had received about $2.4 million in grants — abandoned plans to renovate the hotel in April 1987 and put it up for sale with a price tag of $1.3 million. Two hundred women completed its pre-apprenticeship programs before the foundation shut down.
How does Rivera think access to social media and streaming networks might play a role if “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults” were aired today?
What happened to the Lexington after ‘Al Capone’s Vaults’
In 1995, a judge declared the edifice “a public nuisance” and granted city attorneys’ request that it be torn down. The Lexington’s landmark status was revoked. Detailed measurements of the building and its spaces were taken prior to demolition, but the long-rumored hidden tunnels and staircases from Capone’s time at the Lexington were not found. Scavengers — grabbing “mob mementos” — took loose bricks, window frames and even the remaining green and purple tiles from Capone’s former bathroom, which were later sold for as much as $750, as the wrecking ball tore into the structure.
Gangland ties weren’t enough to save other Chicago properties. The SMC Cartage Co., formerly at 2122 N. Clark St., was the scene of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. It’s now a parking lot and green space. The site of Schofield’s, the North State Street flower shop where mobster Dean O’Banion was slain across from Holy Name Cathedral, is now under construction as One Chicago — one of the biggest developments ever proposed in the city.
The city seemed more keen to raze rather than rehab vintage properties in the 1990s. A 2003 Tribune investigation found developers and city officials tore down more than 200 buildings that were identified in a city survey as architecturally or historically significant — including the Lexington.
The Near South Side was changing. The neighborhood saw a surge of new housing. “Generally, we’re seeing ‘adaptive reuse’ — commercial buildings and factories being converted into housing,” Barbara Lynne, president and executive director of the Near South Planning Board, told the Tribune in April 1996.
The Lex — a 296-unit apartment tower with a heated garage, sixth-floor fitness center, rooftop pool and hot tub, dog run and street-level stores — opened on the site in March 2012. Across Indiana Avenue from the Lex is Wintrust Arena, home to the Chicago Sky and DePaul University’s basketball teams, opened in 2017.
The Tribune’s archives are at your fingertips at Newspapers.com.
Source: Chicago Tribune archives
