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

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True Crime, Culture, Social, Society & Culture, News

4.4 • 38K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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/46Pk4hk Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1AEZRIusS9zJoxkahTV6KJ

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody and welcome to Talking Dateline. I'm Lester Holt. Today, our guest is Josh
0:09.0	Mancoitz is going to talk all about the Prince, the Wiz Kid, and the Millionaire. Yes, it's an intriguing
0:14.2	title. It's a more intriguing story. If you haven't seen it, you can go watch the full episode on
0:19.5	Peacock or listen to it on the Dateline podcast feed
0:23.0	and then come right back here and you'll be totally nourished on this story.
0:26.7	All right, to recap, it was retired art collector and Palm Springs socialite Cliff Lambert.
0:31.9	He suddenly vanished in 2008.
0:34.7	Investigators uncovered an elaborate by a group of grifters to steal Lambert's money and his life.
0:41.8	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 deadline.
0:52.3	Josh, let's get right into it.
0:53.9	This was not weeks in the making.
0:55.6	This wasn't months in the making, which is sometimes typical for dateline.
0:59.0	This was literally years in the making.
1:00.8	Yeah, this took about two and a half years.
1:03.1	I think the first interview I did was Tyson Ranch, which was in Las Vegas.
1:08.3	And then after that, we went to, we went to Palm Springs and we did that
1:13.7	wonderful interview with Barbara Wisby. The richness of the characters in this episode, I thought,
1:20.0	really made a difference. And I also thought Palm Springs as a character in itself kind of,
1:23.8	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
1:28.7	Cliff was.
1:30.3	Eddie was a sensational interview.
1:32.9	We did him early.
	...

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