'Black Madam' convicted of murder, assault in butt injections

AFTER ALL the big-butt jokes, after all the jaw-dropping revelations and after all the colorful characters in the case of "Black Madam" Padge-Victoria Windslowe, the trial of the woman who injected people's butts with silicone ended yesterday in a solemn word spoken four times: "Guilty."

Windslowe, 45, who walked into court dressed in a black coat, powder-pink miniskirt and matching open suit jacket, revealing a low-neck white tank and a busty chest, showed no reaction upon hearing the verdicts.

After she sat down and the jury of six men and six women was polled - each saying he or she agreed with the verdicts - Windslowe appeared a bit hurt. When she left the courtroom, walking into the side hallway for defendants who are held in custody, she didn't look back.

Windslowe, born a man, ran an escort service and has said that everyone called her the "Michelangelo of buttocks injections." She was convicted of third-degree murder in the Feb. 8, 2011, death of British street dancer Claudia Aderotimi, 20, who had flown from London to Philadelphia to get butt injections from Windslowe.

She also was convicted of aggravated assault for the injuries suffered by a Philadelphia strip-club dancer, Sherkeeia King, then 23, who was hospitalized after being injected by Windslowe at a "pumping party" in East Germantown in February 2012.

Windslowe also was convicted of two counts of possession of an instrument of crime.

She could face up to 70 years in prison when sentenced June 11 by Common Pleas Judge Rose Marie DeFino-Nastasi.

Jurors deliberated an hour Friday and three hours yesterday before reaching their verdicts.

Before the trial started, Windslowe rejected a plea deal from prosecutors in which, if she were to plead guilty to third-degree murder, she would get a 15-to-30-year prison sentence.

Instead, she wanted her day in court and her chance to speak.

Windslowe testified for about nine hours over three days. She told jurors that she began to inject people's butts in 1995, a year after her sex change. People wanted bigger butts to feel "more womanly, shapely," she said.

She claimed to have enhanced celebrity butts like those of model Amber Rose.

She said she felt "horrible and wretched" after Aderotimi died, after which she "retreated" to her sister's house in Delaware. She said she had not wanted anything bad to happen to Aderotimi.

Her attorney, David Rudenstein, said after the verdicts: "She's always expressed remorse. She's always felt very bad. She wanted to do a good job. I absolutely believe that."

Asked what he thought of her testimony, he said, "Perhaps she had too many answers for everything." But, he added, "She got a chance to tell her story."

Windslowe's trial, which began Feb. 19, was interrupted after she reported having chest pains in prison a week ago Monday. She was hospitalized for three days.

The trial testimony included many tantalizing tidbits - especially for an audience new to the underworld of black-market silicone butt injections - but at times the ear-grabber was what was said when the jury was not in the courtroom.

After jurors were dismissed on the first day of the trial, Rudenstein told the judge that he was going to ask for the jury to see Windslowe's naked body as evidence.

Windslowe had gotten silicone injections in her own body, and the defense wanted to show the jury that she was living proof that the injections were not harmful.

In the end, though, the matter was not brought up in open court again. "There had been an original request to show her whole naked body," Rudenstein said yesterday. "After a lot of talk, the defense agreed we might display her naked backside. We had actual pictures taken. . . . After having considered it, for strategic reasons, we decided not to put it on."

Windslowe's sister Sherri Johnson, who was in court every day, told reporters outside the courthouse that there will be an appeal: "The battle ain't over yet. God is still in control . . . I'm still going to stand with her to the end."

Assistant District Attorneys Carlos Vega and Bridget Kirn showed in the trial that Windslowe had no license to practice medicine, was using an industrial-grade silicone that was unsafe and continued to inject women's butts after Aderotimi's death.

Windslowe claimed to her clients that she was a physician's assistant or a nurse practitioner when she was not, according to trial evidence and witnesses.

"She was a liar," Vega said. "It was a front. She preyed on people who were uneducated, who were hoping to be beautiful, and she tricked them."

Why did she do it? "She did it for the money, pure and simple," Kirn said. "That she could bring in women and charge them thousands of dollars to put a fraudulent product in their bodies."

King, one of the victims, now 26, testified at the trial that she still has breathing problems and can't chase after her son in the park.

"That silicone is always going to be in her lungs, it's always going to be in her heart," Kirn said.

"The message is, 'Do not do it,' " Kirn said. "This is a deadly practice. Silicone is not an injectable substance in the body, period."