Bi man convicted in ‘gay grifters’ case talks to B.A.R.

The bisexual Bay Area man serving a life sentence for the murder of a gay Palm Springs retiree in the notorious 2008 “gay grifters” killing is breaking his silence. In an exclusive telephone interview from California State Prison, Corcoran, Miguel Bustamante is speaking publicly about the case for the first time since the conviction in his second trial in 2023.

Bustamante, 41, told the Bay Area Reporter he was found guilty on perjured testimony from two witnesses. He said he was not in Clifford Lambert’s house when the retired art dealer was stabbed to death.

Bustamante told the B.A.R. that his former co-defendant, Kaushal Niroula, told him while they were both in the same prison in 2012 that another man killed Lambert after Niroula got into an argument with Lambert over the signing of a document. The B.A.R. is not naming that man because he has not yet responded to a request for comment about his involvement in the case.

Niroula was murdered by a cellmate in 2022. (Niroula’s parents filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against Riverside County in 2023 stating that Niroula identified as a transgender woman and shouldn’t have been put in a cell with a violent sex offender. Denisse Gastélum, an attorney representing Niroula’s parents, stated in an email that the case is in litigation with trial set for September 23.)

When told of Bustamante’s interview with the B.A.R., Riverside County Senior Deputy District Attorney Lisa DiMaria, who investigated and prosecuted the first case against Bustamante and his co-defendants, told the B.A.R in an email, “The only thing I can say is every time these guys open their mouths, a new story flies out of it. I believe the evidence produced at trial was accurate and I don’t believe a thing they say.”

Craig McCarthy told police in 2009 that Niroula had surreptitiously let him and Bustamante into Lambert’s home while Niroula was meeting with Lambert. Niroula had pretended to be a lawyer who was arranging an inheritance due Lambert. (McCarthy, who was Bustamante’s roommate, testified against the other men and pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, avoiding a life sentence.)

Lambert heard a noise in his kitchen and confronted Bustamante and McCarthy when, according to McCarthy, Bustamante used Lambert’s kitchen knives to stab him multiple times. McCarthy says he and Bustamante cleaned the scene and took Lambert’s body away in Lambert’s Mercedes.

Lambert’s killing took place in early December 2008. His remains were not discovered until 2016 and 2017 near Castaic, in northern Los Angeles County. But the remains were not identified through DNA as being Lambert’s until 2020.

As part of the plea deal, McCarthy will be eligible for parole next year.

Besides McCarthy’s testimony implicating Bustamante in Lambert’s killing, a jailhouse informant told police that Bustamante confessed the murder to him. Bustamante told the B.A.R. that the informant threatened him twice with a knife to admit to the crime and draw up a map where Lambert’s body was left. The informant was given a reduced sentence as a result of what Bustamante said was a coerced and false confession. At one point, Bustamante said that the informant sexually assaulted him, forcing him to perform oral sex on him.

Bustamante, gay former San Francisco resident Daniel Garcia, and gay former San Francisco lawyer David Replogle were convicted of murder twice in the case. Their first convictions were thrown out after the original trial judge was secretly recorded by Garcia stating that he didn’t want to open envelopes from Niroula because he was HIV-positive. Niroula was killed before he could be retried.

Prosecutors say the men were motivated by greed and had plotted to steal Lambert’s home and other possessions.

 
One man awaits sentencing
Replogle is the only defendant in the case who is awaiting sentencing. He will be sentenced on June 27 and is expected to get the same sentence as Garcia and Bustamante – life without the possibility of parole. In separate jailhouse interviews with the B.A.R., Garcia and Replogle maintained their innocence and are appealing their respective cases.

Bustamante was a former bartender at the long-closed Jet bar in San Francisco’s Castro LGBTQ neighborhood where he first met Niroula. Niroula had falsely claimed to be Nepalese royalty. Bustamante recalled that Niroula arrived at the bar with bodyguards and would tip $100 for every drink. He had asked Bustamante to travel to Palm Springs to act as an interpreter to help with a deal he was working on there.

Days after Lambert was reported missing, Bustamante was arrested at Lambert’s home after he was asked by Niroula to retrieve a painting from the residence. Bustamante told the B.A.R. that he had no way of knowing that there was anything nefarious about what he was doing. He said Niroula showed him the deed to the house that was in Niroula’s name. Bustamante added that if he really had killed Lambert, it would make no sense to return to the scene of the crime.

Bustamante told the B.A.R. that he moved from Guatemala to San Francisco when he was 18 to join his mother, who was already living in San Francisco, and that he had a green card and was a legal U.S. resident. He had been attending Heald College, along with McCarthy, and gave him a place to stay with him in his apartment in Daly City.

Although McCarthy did not respond to the B.A.R.’s letter asking for comment, he did respond to Kim Kantner, a producer of the recently released 12-part podcast on the case entitled “American Hustlers.” Kantner said that during her in-person prison interview, McCarthy backed off what he told police about what happened, telling Kantner that if the lawyers had gotten hotel surveillance video then “they would know I wasn’t there when everything happened.”

Kantner said McCarthy spoke intelligently, politely, and articulately. She added that he became emotional and cried during her conversation with him.

When asked about McCarthy apparently backpedaling on what he initially told police, Bustamante cited McCarthy’s reluctant testimony during the second set of trials in the case.

“He doesn’t want to testify. He pleads the fifth. He says he doesn’t feel comfortable,” Bustamante said, adding that the judge forced him to testify, citing the plea agreement he made with the prosecution to avoid a murder charge.

Bustamante told the B.A.R. that he is bisexual and had been living with a woman in Daly City at the time of his arrest. He was able to marry her in January 2021 while in custody and, because of his good behavior in prison, he is allowed conjugal visits.

His now-wife, Michelle Bustamante, wrote in an email to the B.A.R., “Miguel was wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit. Craig McCarthy has submitted a declaration admitting that he gave false testimony during the first trial. During the retrial, Miguel presented clear and convincing evidence proving his innocence beyond a reasonable doubt. The district attorney knowingly pursued charges against Miguel despite clear evidence of his innocence – a grave abuse of prosecutorial power. Even more disturbing, the judge actively steered the jury toward a guilty verdict, undermining the fairness of the trial and violating the very principles of justice.”

Michelle Bustamante forwarded to the B.A.R. a copy of a declaration from McCarthy written in 2021 that McCarthy sent to Bustamante in prison. McCarthy was seeking to have his plea deal rescinded and to be exonerated of any involvement in Lambert’s killing.

In the declaration, McCarthy completely took back what he told police, writing, “Was (sic) a lot of inconsistencies in my details because the cops fed me bullshit to say. I made up a lot just to be left alone.”

McCarthy wrote that he was being used to get to Niroula and Garcia because of the bias the Riverside County District Attorney’s office has against gay people.

The Riverside County District Attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Bustamante is appealing his conviction and said that he hoped the judicial system would eventually see the mistakes made in this case that will ultimately lead to his conviction being overturned.

“I hope people will be able to see the errors ….and I hope I will be able to continue with my freedom,” he told the B.A.R., referring to the fact that his freedom has been interrupted by his imprisonment.

Miguel Bustamante is shown in an undated photo from prison. Photo: Courtesy California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation