Another Chicago mobster vault mystery? Holy cow!
It’s not likely that a Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster and a top lieutenant for a notorious mobster ever crossed paths in life, but Harry Caray and Al Capone enforcer Frank Nitti have intertwined decades after their deaths.
The owner of Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse in the River North neighborhood of downtown Chicago says the building that houses the eatery was once owned by Nitti, and there is a mysterious box encased in a bricked-in vault.
“I didn’t want a crime scene,” Grant DePorter said to WBBM-AM in Chicago. “I feel comfortable it’s not big enough for that. It does look big enough, you know back then, they worked with $1,000 bills, so it does look like it’s big enough to have some significant money in it, potentially.”
DePorter says he will attempt to find out what’s inside the box by using an endoscope and drill before making bigger attempts to remove the brick wall.
Incidentally, it will be 33 years on April 21 when Geraldo Rivera hosted his syndicated special, “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults.” The two-hour live broadcast ended with Rivera finding just debris in the vault.
Contact Tony Garcia at tgarcia@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307. Follow @TonyGLVNews on Twitter.