Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hi, everybody, and welcome to Talking Dateline. I'm Lester Holt. Today, our guest is Josh Mankiewicz, who's going to talk all about The Prince, The Whiz Kid, and The Millionaire. Yes, it's an intriguing title, and it's a more intriguing story.
If you haven't seen it, you can go watch the full episode on Peacock or listen to it on the Dateline podcast feed, and then come right back here, and you'll be totally nourished on this story.
all right to recap it was retired art collector and palm springs socialite cliff lambert he suddenly vanished in 2008 investigators uncovered an elaborate plot by a group of grifters to steal lambert's money and his life and then when cliff's remains were found nine years after he disappeared it was hardly the end of this twisted and shady saga which we'll get into during this talking dateline
Josh, let's get right into it. This was not weeks in the making. This wasn't months in the making, which is sometimes typical for Dateline. This was literally years in the making.
Yeah, this took about two and a half years. I think the first interview I did was Tyson Ranch, which was in Las Vegas. And then after that, we went to Palm Springs and we did that wonderful interview with Barbara Wisby. The richness of the characters in this episode I thought really made a difference. And I also thought Palm Springs as a character in itself kind of made a difference.
And it gave you a sense of sort of what life was like there and also sort of like who Cliff was. Eddie was a sensational interview. We did him early. And then, you know, the case took forever, partly because of COVID. And partly because there were two trials because the first verdict got thrown out.
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Chapter 2: What happened to art dealer Cliff Lambert in 2008?
Eddie came across as a true friend in this. There was no romantic link between these guys, but there was real great depth of affection.
Cliff and Eddie clearly were very good friends. And Eddie, he was like, no, no, something's wrong. If Cliff had left town, I'd know about it. And he went into the cops.
But the fact that Bustamante was taking stuff out of the house, some of which he was putting in the U-Haul and some of which was in his hotel room, which police found, everything about that said that Cliff was being victimized in some way. And that's kind of what made the cops think, there's a crime in progress here.
And what they didn't know at first was whether this was some kind of crime involving cliff who might either was being held against his will, or maybe he was dead or whether cliff was somehow complicit in this, because that was some of their thinking in the early days, like he's disappeared and he's going to say, I'm out of town and he's going to say, everything's been stolen.
And then it's some kind of insurance scam. But eventually they figured out that the problem was something has happened to Cliff. And it was a long time before they figured out what.
Let's talk, if we can, for a second about the Nepalese prince or self-proclaimed prince in this. He kind of appears midway in this and takes on a large role.
Yeah, I mean, look, he's the kind of guy that you want to have if you're doing a grift. I mean, he can play a role. He sounds like he's from another country. He's got this very posh, erudite, you know, I went to the best schools accent. He's also sort of an indeterminate ethnicity, which means he can be a British lawyer. He can be the Nepalese prince.
It's not exactly clear what Cashel's backstory is. And part of the problem here is that you can't really trust anything coming from anybody's lips here. But he certainly presented himself as this prince and did that very, very effectively. And if you're doing a con, you need somebody who can be a good actor.
And he definitely was. He got on the phone at one point regarding the artwork and took me a second to realize, wait a minute, we've heard that voice.
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Chapter 3: How did the investigation uncover the grifter plot?
disposition of the case. You know, we want to be able to say in a story, this is how it ended.
Yeah, Lisa DeMaria, what a fascinating character there. She is obviously the prosecutor. She's no nonsense. She's going to take this case to its conclusion. She's also about that tall. Is she really? I couldn't get a sense of that. Yeah, she's tiny. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, she was a go-getter. And you're like, well, she's nailing these guys. And then everything gets turned on her.
And I don't think... I didn't see that coming.
I mean, look, if I had committed some terrible crime, Lisa DeMaria is about one of the last people I'd want coming after me. Because she was relentless. And she lived and breathed that thing for years and years and years. And then she got the conviction that she had worked so hard for. And then... Because of the judge's remark, the convictions were all stricken, all reversed.
They had to have four new trials. And They did not let her do the retrial. There is no official reason why that was. I never got the full story out of her for that. But ultimately, I think justice was served by Rob Hightower, who prosecuted the case and got the convictions.
These defendants, though, you know, if you ever can give a murderer credit, in this case, they really turned the prosecution back on its heels.
You know, they definitely thought harder, longer, and more effectively than a lot of the defendants that we see on Dateline. And of course, one of these defendants was themselves a lawyer and the others were practiced con men who sort of knew how to take advantage of every loophole in the law. Ultimately, the system won out and they were convicted.
Well, Josh, as you mentioned, we're going to get a little more insight into this. We're going to talk to David Ketterling, one of our colleagues, a producer on this program. He'll be talking about Stephen Valentino. This is a character you didn't meet in the actual broadcast, but he's got an interesting story to tell. We're going to have that when we come back on Talking Daylight.
All right, welcome back to Talking Dateline. We're back here with Josh as well as David Ketterling. He's a producer at Dateline NBC and was one of the producers on this program. There was so much in this two-hour broadcast that some stuff did get left on the proverbial cutting room floor, including an interview with a guy named Stephen Valentino.
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Chapter 4: How did Eddie contribute to uncovering the truth?
Right. Um, uh, you know, I'm like, yeah, go ahead. Um, first of all, you know, we should do more stories like that, right? In which we're driving around with the person. A lot of times we do the story, we do interviews in cars, but one of us is driving. The person that's being interviewed, which frequently is a law enforcement representative or a or I'm driving and I'm looking at the camera.
I've done that a few times. You know, the camera's in like the passenger seat. This was great because this chauffeured interview with me and Barbara in the backseat and her with her cigarette talking about how LaRue Cliff's parties were, which is a word I had never heard before and have never heard since. Is it a word? We don't know. I mean, it's a Barbara word. It's a Barbarism.
I'm willing to accept that it's a word. I don't know if Webster's would agree with me, but hey, why not?
We'll take a break here. When we come back, we're going to listen in on social media, say what folks are asking or curious about in this program.
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Chapter 5: What role did the Nepalese prince play in the crime?
That doesn't say a lot, guys.
That's not the best commercial for you when somebody who says I'm a sociopath. But yes, I agree. He was by far the most rational of all of those people.
And then our viewer Milo goes on to say about the motive. I understand money was the motive, but how? I still don't get why those losers had to kill him since they knew very well how to con people without violence. Sickening, but it's just very confusing. I think it's actually, it's a very fair point. I did find myself wondering about that, that You know, you guys know how to con. Why kill?
Well, I mean, look.
I think originally, and Dave, check me on this, but I think originally the plan was to con Cliff out of money. Part of Danny's backstory, don't know how much of this or any of it is true, is that he was abused as a younger man and that he wanted to create an app that would allow people to track sexual predators or people who were registered sex offenders.
in real time so you'd know if you were near them. Danny originally approached Cliff with, was, I want you to participate in this business venture with me. And when Cliff didn't bite on that, and in fact, threw Danny out of his house for sort of, you know, going through his computer and going through his office,
That's, I think, when Danny also got the idea, wait a minute, if we disappear this guy, no one will notice. And so this kind of escalated, this original plot escalated a separating cliff from his money to killing him, selling his house, his possessions, and his artwork. I would say also it was like, you know,
They were all kind of trying to one up each other on who's the better con, you know, including Dennis. And then when Cashel got out of jail or out for the jewelry heist, you know, I'm thinking maybe he was a little bit desperate or something. And it escalated at that point. I mean, Danny's whole thing was he was financial crimes up until Cliff Lambert came into the picture.
And there is no allegation or evidence that Danny was present when Cliff was killed. I mean, it is a little bit like he was the director of this plan because he sent all those texts. But Danny definitely wasn't there at the time that Cliff was killed.
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