This is the 40thanniversary of a true-life story concerning Scarface Al Capone.

It starts in January 1986 on board my old sailboat, New Wave. The crew and I were just beginning to transit the Panama Canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After sailing via from Key West to Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua, the plan was to head through the canal up the West Coast of Mexico to Los Angeles and from there onto Hawaii continuing west around the world.

That is a daunting passage of more than 25,000 miles, but I had plenty of time on my hands. In fact, I was among the most famous unemployed people in America.

After a career with ABC News, beginning with “Eyewitness News,” then “Goodnight America,” “Good Morning America,” and “ABC 20/20,” I had just been fired after a wickedly public argument with my long-term friend and mentor, Roone Arledge.

A creative genius, Roone was president of both ABC News and Sports. Not that it matters much now, but the career-ending fight was about whether 20/20 should air a story my colleague Sylvia Chase was reporting concerning alleged extramarital intimacy involving Marilyn Monroe, the sex symbol of her time, and John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy, respectively, the president and attorney general of the United States.

Roone said it was tabloid trash. The 20/20 staff said it was well-reported and that perhaps the reason it wasn’t airing was that Roone had a long-time friendship with Ethel Kennedy, Bobby’s widow. Anyway, the story of the editorial dispute leaked to People Magazine. Five minutes after it hit the newsstands, after 15 years, I was history at ABC News.

What does that have to do with the notorious prohibition era gangster Al Capone?

Just this. Amid transiting the Panama Canal, I had received an urgent message to contact the Tribune Company in Chicago. At the time, owner of a nationwide chain of newspapers and local television stations,

Tribune had secured the rights to open a recently discovered vault in the basement of the now defunct Lexington Hotel on the South Side. Controlled during the Prohibition era by the gangster Capone, the vault was thought to contain a treasure trove of cash, gold, and weapons.

The skeletal remains of several gangsters from the period were also thought to be hidden behind the vault’s thick cement walls. The plan was to open it on live television.

Source: LI Press