Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Prince, The Whiz Kid, & The Millionaire

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Lester Holt talks with Josh Mankiewicz about his episode, “The Prince, The Whiz Kid, & The Millionaire.” After retired art dealer and Palm Springs socialite Cliff Lambert vanished in 2008, investigators uncovered a plot by a group of grifters that ended in murder. Lester and Josh discuss the mistakes the killers made leading up to their arrests and are joined by Dateline producer David Ketterling to talk about how he captured the essence of Palm Springs on camera. They play a podcast-exclusive clip from an interview with an opera singer who had a run in with one of the conspirators and discuss the pros of doing interviews in cars. Plus, they answer your questions from social media.Listen to the full episode of “The Prince, The Whiz Kid, & The Millionaire” on Apple: https://apple.co/46Pk4hkListen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1AEZRIusS9zJoxkahTV6KJ  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, everybody, and welcome to Talking Dateline. I'm Lester Holt. Today, our guest is Josh Mankowitz, is going to talk all about the Prince, the Wiz Kid, and the Millionaire. Yes, it's an intriguing title. 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 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, 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. And then the two of the defendants, Danny and David Rapogel, managed to delay sentencing for a long time. And so that made everything last longer.

So it was a lot longer. than most Dateline episodes. Yeah, and one of the things I pulled away from this program is that Cliff, in the end, was a lonely character. He surrounded himself by a lot of people, his buddy, Eddie, but at the heart of it, he strikes me as someone that was rather lonely. One of the things that I thought sort of kind of is going to hit home with all dateline viewers is that there were some very recognizable themes in this.

Cliff was a lonely person who made some foolish romantic choices. You know, Cliff lost a lot of his friends to AIDS in the 80s and 90s. So he was not just lonely. He also had lost a lot of people. And, you know, there's no way that that doesn't weigh on you. So, you know, I think Danny figured out that Cliff didn't have a family and he didn't have a lot of close friends. And I think they thought, if we make this guy disappear, basically no one's going to notice in the amount of time that we need to clean out his house, sell the artwork, and get all his money.

And were it not for Eddie, they were just about right. The way this came to light, at the end of the day, it came apart because a guy was moving some stuff, and a real estate agent kind of blew the whistle. Yeah, the real estate agent got a listing for the house and couldn't figure out why the person selling it wanted such a small amount of money for what was a house that was going to bring a lot more money, but they wanted to sell it like in the next couple of days. The neighbors across the street, who I think were sitting out on their porch having an afternoon cocktail, realized they hadn't seen Cliff in a while, saw Abe U-Haul across

the street with somebody putting stuff into it. And they thought like, that's kind of weird. I had no idea Cliff was moving. They called the cops. So, and Eddie, you know, Eddie who was waiting for Cliff at the Festival of Lights, which is an annual thing in Palm Springs. It's the event that Eddie and I were walking around during that you saw in the show. But, you know, it was Eddie who first thought something's wrong.

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 either was being held against his will or maybe he was dead or whether Cliff was somehow complicit in this. 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 the 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 school's 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 Kishal's back. 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 it took me a second he realized, we've heard that voice. Yeah, that's right. I mean, these guys were very sharp about some things, and they were incredibly stupid about other things.

Like, it didn't occur, though, if I pull a U-Haul truck up to this guy's house that we've just murdered, people are going to see it, they might call police. They did not realize that Cliff had a friend who was such a good friend that he would call police if Cliff didn't show up. One of the mistakes they made was leaving a voicemail message, which later would be essentially identified as being Kishal. I mean, that's the other cops. That was like the light bulb moment for the cops.

They're like, wait a minute. I know who you are. you posed as that as that British lawyer and and you're part of this con but kishal is the guy who let the murderers into Cliff's house so I mean he's a fraud he's a con man but he's complicit in a brutal murder he's a lot more than just a fast talking guy with a good accent we also hear directly from someone who was in the room at the time at the killing who walked, police literally walked blow by blow through what ultimately happened. I mean, the old saying, first squeal gets the deal.

That was Craig McCarthy. He pled to a lesser sentence. He testified against the other defendants, and he told police what had happened. Now, in his version of the story, he is sort of a bystander. I don't know the police believe that he was just a bystander, but they needed to flip somebody to bring down this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, I'm watching the guy they did. Yeah, so I'm watching the episode and I'm watching my clock thinking, well, this thing's wrapping up early here.

We, you know, the case has gone to court. They've got a guilty verdict. End of story. No. This, this, I, I keep wondering, how do you know when you finish a story like this? And we still might not be finished. I mean, you know, right. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, nothing would surprise me about this story.

To the point, I mean, this, this, this story was. ran at the beginning of this season of Dayline. It was supposed to run last season sometime. And it couldn't because we didn't have the final disposition of the case. You know, we want to be able to say in a story, this is how it ended. Yeah, Lisa D. Maria, 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, D. Maria 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 had 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, 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 conmen 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. He crossed paths with Prince Kashul Nurula and has a story to tell about his mother's missing jewelry. And Josh, why don't you give me a setup? on this. Well, I mean, look, Stephen Valentino is one of the guys that we came across while we were reporting this story. But the interesting thing about Mr. Valentino is he didn't really have anything to do with the Cliff Lambert plot. He can give you some background on what was what it was like to know, Kashal Nurula. And ultimately, we decided that, first of all, you know, with the

amount of material we had and the size of this story, there's some stuff that didn't make the final cut. So that's why you're going to hear this now and not on the TV program. Okay, Dave, you want to set up the exact bite for us? Yeah, so Kachal and the Rula lived with Stephen Valentino for a while, and Stephen saw him one day going in and out of his mother's bedroom and came home later to realize that all of his mother's jewelry had been stolen. Which was with a lot of money. Yeah, he was a jewelry collector, and he came home. The person who he thought it was his friend ended up stealing a bunch of his mom's jewelry. I went into my mother's bedroom, and the first thing I noticed was her chest of drawers.

The top drawer was actually a jar. It was open, and I walked over to it, and I pulled it out, and it was virtually empty. Millions worth of jewelry missing, what immediately went through my mind. other than Monning to choke him to death was where is Kashal right

now? Because he was the only one that was in that room. So I called the Marin County Sheriff's Department. They came out. They fingerprinted and

basically they started searching for Kashal. Well, it sounds like there were other stories to tell Dave, nonetheless, the crickets have their own story to tell, I guess. I love that. I love the crickets. The crickets were definitely a thing in that. But more importantly, it gets me back to this. And the thing that I was curious about this whole program was there have to be more stories, more, you know, that this isn't necessarily a one-off. You know, we talked about Eddie and we talked about the neighbors, right? We didn't talk about

Tyson, right? Tyson, you know, got fleeced by Danny very early on, long before these guys, I think, had ever heard of Cliff Lambert, and he kind of, you know, thought, no, no, you're not, you're not doing this, not, not with me, you're not. I'm going to find out what happened because, like, the bank said to Tyson, like, you know, and the cops said to Tyson, like, we're not going to really do anything until someone gets hurt, you know, it's just one guy stealing somebody else's money and you got your money back from the bank. So, you know, we're not going to knock ourselves out.

Well, you know, let's say that San Francisco PD. had gone after Danny and that he had been locked up. I don't know what would have happened, but Cliff Lambert might still be alive. And part of what happened here was that, you know, conning somebody is not perceived as serious a crime as conning somebody and then killing them. And unfortunately, you know,

none of the brakes were put on until Cliff Lambert was already gone. You know, I'm going to say one more thing about this, which is Dave, who's joining us today, one of the two producers is not just responsible for following this thing because he's not just a producer,

but he's also a video editor and photographer. And so, you know, normally we say, you know, you can listen to this episode. It's right on the podcast feed, right? But I would urge you to go to Peacock

and watch this episode because part of what made this such a great episode are those pictures. And part of why that all works is because of Dave, who was largely responsible for the sort of look of this and of making Palm Springs a character. And looking at this episode,

in addition to just listening to it, is worth your time. And that's because of Dave. Well, Dave. Thank you, Josh. All right. Palm Springs is such a beautiful place. I mean, sometimes you can just point the camera and you get gold.

So, but I really appreciate that, Josh. It was a long journey. Really was. So at the end, the big surprise was Cliff and this multi-million dollar art collection was not what it seemed. Nothing. I mean, look, this is a story in which nothing was what it seemed. And Cliff Lambert, rest his soul, bragged himself into an early grave. He told everybody how much money he had.

He told everybody how valuable his art was. And it was all BS. Like, you know, Clifford. I mean, and again, like, like, how stupid were these killers? This guy had run an art reproduction business. Like, this guy sold that phony art. Like, you think none of it was on it? You think he sells that, but he's got the real thing on his walls? Like, I mean, that wasn't a giant leap of logic, but these criminals, these murderers, could not figure that out.

So I can't let you guys get out of here with talking about Barbara Wisby, who was a terrific character, gave a lot of insight into the lifestyle. in Palm Springs. How did you come across her? We found her through Karen Devine at KESQ in Palm Springs. She's the anchor out there. And she's like, have you talked to Cliff's friend Barbara yet? And I'm like, no. And she's like, well, she's a talker. And I was like, great. When I did this thing, I did producer booking interviews. And so we kind of had a chat. And I sat her down. I said, you know, Barbara, you know, Palm Springs, what do you love about it? And she's like, it's such a diverse place, you know, come one, come all, come short,

come tall, come fat, come slim, you can all get in. And I was like, and you're like, that's getting on television. That's going. Yeah. So I'm like, wow. And then the Barbara isms just kept coming. Barbara's one of those people that, you know, and I'm sure all the other correspondents on Dateline, you know, would agree with me about this, which is after you interview the

you're thinking like, were you a witness to any other crimes? Because I'll put you in any story that you want to talk about. Yeah. Whose idea was it to put Mankowitz in the driver's seat of a car? And by the way, it's not the first time this season we've seen you, Josh, at the wheel. Yes. Well, okay, I was not at the wheel. I was in the back of the car where I can do a lot less damage.

And with Barbara, who was smoking innumerable cigarettes with the top down. And I love how Barbara says to me, do you mind if I smoke? I'm thinking like, as if there's any way I could stop you, right? You know, I'm like, yeah, go ahead. 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. either the person that's being interviewed which frequently is a law enforcement representative

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 chauffeur to interview with me and Barbara in the backseat and her with her cigarette talking about how Leroux Cliff's parties were,

which is a word I had never heard before and have never heard since. Is it a word? I mean, it's a Barbara word. It's a Barbara isn't. 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. All right, welcome back, Josh and Dave Ketterling. We've got several questions about the crime scene that we want to bring to you. Let's take a lesson. Hi, this is Amy in Massachusetts. I'm calling to ask how the crime investigator missed the blood that would have been in the kitchen

or the car trunk. And were they not using Luminal? Because I've learned about Luminal on Dateline and it seems to work in most cases. Thank you for another great episode. I thought it wasn't possible to clean a crime scene so effectively that modern forensic techniques, and it's not just Luminal, who by the way should be paying us some kind of royalty. It's not just Luminal. There's a couple other products like that. But

But I would have thought that modern forensic techniques would bring out blood. I mean, the whole point of that is it finds blood and bodily fluids even after you try to clean them up, even after you make a really good effort to clean them up. But they didn't. A certain amount of time had gone by. That might have helped. I'm sure they bleached it. And by then, the bleach had probably the bleach smell had disappeared because it wasn't

like they were there the day after Cliff died. Maybe they shouldn't have been grifters. Maybe they should have been house cleaners because they might have been better at that. Okay, here's one. We had a lot of viewers weighing it about Danny's sociopath cousin Dennis. Hi, this is Catherine from South Carolina. What was the experience like interviewing someone who actually identified as a sociopath? Thanks so much. Yeah. Hi, Catherine. Look, I'm not sure I have ever interviewed anyone who self-identified as a sociopath. That was a little surprising. I also need to tell Dennis Murphy that Dennis backwards is sinned.

I don't think he's aware of that. You know, Dennis, Danny's cousin was a very interesting guy and a very important guy for our story because he tells us all kinds of things that happened behind the scenes. And, you know, at this point, has not faced any charges. Yeah, he just kept himself out of it. And here's Mila on Facebook. she adds, she says this about Dennis, the self-proclaimed sociopath appeared most likable out of all these criminals. 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, Mila 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, you know, I think originally, and Dave checked me on this, but I mean, I think originally the plan was to con Cliff out of money. The plan will, you know, Danny, well, 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 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 Cashal 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 Danny, 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. And we have, before we get out of here, we have a video

question from one of our Dateline ambassadors, Chuck DZ 76. Let's give this a watch. Hi, Dateline. Hi, Josh Mankowitz. It's Charles, aka Chuck Dizzy 76. My question is for Josh. There were a lot of amazing fashions in last week's episode. I just want to know, was your tie bloodstink?

I think you're sitting in an interview. It's like dark blue at the top and then it starts to get red and the tie actually matches your jacket. Please let me know. Thanks in advance. Bye. Hi, Chuck Dizzy. No, I do not have a bloodstained tie, although it did kind of look like that.

No, it's just a blue and red striped tie. But great to see Chuck Deasy, who is a friend of our broadcast and literally one of our most loyal viewers. Chuck, you rock. You did bring the outfits in this show, though, Josh. You always look dapper, but you did look great in this show. I was trying to look very Leroux. And you did. All right, well, guys, that's going to do it, Talking Dateline.

Remember, if you have any questions. questions about our program, about the stories we're covering, you can catch us 24-7 on social media at Dateline NBC. If you have a question for talking, Dateline, leave it for us in a voicemail. The number is 212-413-5252. Or send us a video on socials for a chance to be featured on a future episode. We'll see you Friday on Dateline NBC. Thanks for listening, everyone. So long. Thank you.