'Black Madam' case features underworld of butt injections

WEARING WHITE knee-high socks, a baby-blue miniskirt and jacket, and a long black coat, her hair in a loose ponytail to one side, Padge Victoria Windslowe looked like a schoolgirl.

A pretty one, at that. Her makeup was perfectly done: bright-red lipstick, reddish-pink blush and matching eye shadow.

Even though she's in custody in a city jail, Windslowe - a former singer and entertainer known as the "Black Madam" - appeared poised as she sat at the defense table at the start of her trial yesterday on third-degree-murder and related charges.

Windslowe is accused of killing Claudia Aderotimi, 20, a Briton who came to Philadelphia to receive silicone butt injections from Windslowe at the Hampton Inn near Philadelphia International Airport in February 2011.

During a pretrial motion in the morning, before the jury was brought into the courtroom, Windslowe, 45, testified that what she did to make women's butts bigger was "an art. It's body-sculpting."

"Everyone was calling me the Michelangelo of buttocks injections," she said.

After Windslowe returned to the defense table, Common Pleas Judge Rose Marie DeFino-Nastasi asked her if she planned to testify in the trial.

Windslowe, wearing a silver necklace with a large cross, responded: "More than anything in the world, I'm going to get up there [to testify]. There's nothing that's going to change my mind . . . My most important thing is to put Claudia's mother at peace by speaking."

The jury of six men and six women heard testimony from two New York women who knew Windslowe by her street name, "Lillian," and who had learned of her butt-injection procedures from the Internet.

Both women said they wanted their butts enhanced. Scheffee Wilson, 34, dressed in a dark jacket, skirt and knee-high black boots, said that in summer 2008, when she was living in New Jersey, she came to the Microtel Inn near Philadelphia International Airport to meet Windslowe and get silicone butt injections.

In the hotel room, Windslowe injected Wilson's butt cheeks four times on each side, then sealed up each injection with Krazy Glue and cotton balls, Wilson said.

Around 2010, Wilson said, she started recruiting people to get butt enhancements by Windslowe. She received $250 to $275 for each referral. She referred two women in London whom she met online - Aderotimi and Theresa Gyamfi. After the two got butt injections from Windslowe in Philly, they got a second round of shots on Feb. 7, 2011.

Aderotimi stayed with Gyamfi in Room 425 of the Hampton Inn. She got her butt injected first by Windslowe, testified Wilson, who was also in the hotel room.

After Windslowe finished injecting one of Aderotimi's butt cheeks, she went to the other cheek. "When she got to the third injection site, she [Aderotimi] kind of jolted," Wilson testified, getting emotional on the stand.

Later that day, Windslowe was in Wilson's room withdrawing fluid from a lump that had grown bigger in Wilson's butt, when Aderotimi and Gyamfi came in, Wilson said. Aderotimi clutched her chest and said she was having chest pains and difficulty breathing, Wilson testified.

Windslowe asked if Aderotimi was OK and recommended that she eat, then "she made haste, had to go" and left the hotel, Wilson said.

Wilson, who now works in real estate, said she called 9-1-1. Aderotimi was taken to a Delaware County hospital, where she died the next day.

After Wilson learned that Aderotimi had died, she informed Windslowe, who then "hung up the phone," Wilson testified.

Stephanie Matos, 32, the other New York woman, testified that she, her sister, her sister's friend and another woman drove to Philly for butt injections by Windslowe in August 2008. Her sister's friend, Melissa Lisath, got more injections the next month. She said Lisath then got ill. Matos, who now works at the front desk of a hotel, said she now has "lumps" and when her boyfriend "taps me, it hurts."

In his opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega said Windslowe falsely told women she was a nurse practitioner, worked for a plastic surgeon and was going to use medical-grade silicone.

What she used instead, Vega said, was "silicone for machines, for use on tanks by the military and to lubricate car engines."

"It's poison," he said.

Defense lawyer David Rudenstein, in his opening, loudly told jurors: "When you keep hearing, 'Poison, poison, poison' . . . that's not what happened. There's a lot of stupidity in this case." Windslowe injected herself with silicone, he said, adding: "She wouldn't have done it to herself if she's afraid of killing herself."

After the jury was dismissed for the day, Rudenstein told the judge he was "going to ask for a jury view of my client's body. It doesn't have to be in open court."

Her body is evidence, he said, adding: "Her freedom's at stake."

"Yeah, it is," Windslowe said.

The judge didn't make a ruling.

Windslowe also is charged with aggravated assault in connection with injections she allegedly gave to a 23-year-old exotic dancer at a "pumping party" in 2012 in East Germantown.