'Black Madam' apologizes for butt injections at sentencing

THE SELF-STYLED "Black Madam," who pumped people's butts with silicone to make them plumper, apologized at her sentencing hearing yesterday for killing one woman and injuring another.

"I never knew the dangers of this. I did this to myself and to my friends," said Padge-Victoria Windslowe, who had testified during a pretrial hearing that "everyone was calling me the Michelangelo of buttocks injections."

Windslowe said that she herself had gotten silicone injections in her body when she transitioned from being a male to a female.

"I was transgender. . . . When someone helped me with that, I felt like an ugly duckling turned into a swan," Windslowe, 45, said yesterday, dressed in a white sweater with a ruffled collar that went down her front, a matching skirt and white knee-high stockings, her hair in a side ponytail.

Common Pleas Judge Rose Marie DeFino-Nastasi sentenced Windslowe to 10 to 20 years in prison, plus six years' probation.

She reprimanded Windslowe, who was not a doctor or nurse, saying that "there's some things you just don't understand."

The judge said she didn't consider Windslowe to be hard-hearted or evil. But, she said, Windslowe's actions disregarded the value of human life.

"I think there is a serious issue where you believe you don't have to follow by the rules of society," the judge told Windslowe.

What Windslowe did, the judge said, was "not a medically authorized procedure."

"Silicone just can't be placed in the body in any way," she said.

A jury in March convicted Windslowe of third-degree murder in the Feb. 8, 2011, death of Claudia Aderotimi, 20, a dancer who had flown from London to a Philadelphia airport hotel to get butt injections from Windslowe.

The panel also convicted her 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 2012.

It convicted her of two counts of possession of an instrument of crime for the needles used.

Speaking to Windslowe, the judge said that even if she didn't know that her silicone butt injections had seriously injured one woman - Melissa Lisath, of New York - before Aderotimi's death, "you certainly knew" of the dangers of silicone injections when Aderotimi died.

"It is a problem that you came back and you did it again. You did it to Ms. King," the judge said.

Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega told the judge that King - who was not in court - doesn't know if "the poison" in her body from the injections will kill her. And she still feels effects from the injections, Vega said.

Assistant District Attorney Bridget Kirn told the judge that in a mental-health report, psychologist Steven Samuel wrote that Windslowe "is narcissistic, she wants to be held in high regard and get fame."

Kirn also said that Windslowe was trying to start a new business and was repeating her "fraudulent behavior."

Windslowe has advertised that funds from her proposed new product line - ASSsets - would go to Aderotimi's family and has promoted a walk in the name of the Claudia Seye Aderotimi Foundation.

"The victim's family does not want this!" Kirn said, looking at Windslowe.

In a letter describing her new business idea to the judge, Windslowe wrote that she "would shout to the high heavens just how dangerous" silicone injections are, now that she knows they are dangerous.

She wrote that her new product would be undergarments "that will redirect fat cells when continuously worn to more desired positions."

Windslowe had sent a copy of the letter to the Daily News.

DeFino-Nastasi said Windslowe sent the brochure "to almost every judge in the building."

The judge also said she has received "voluminous" letters from Windslowe's fellow inmates at the city's female jail and "a lot" of letters from Windslowe herself.

She told Windslowe to stop promoting anything with Aderotimi's name on it.

Windslowe's attorney, David Rudenstein, said his client "is a very complicated person" who is nonviolent and has done a lot of good. "I don't think she deliberately hurt anyone in this case," he said.

He said he didn't see anything wrong with her trying to create a new clothing line, and said she's an entrepreneur.

A dozen family members and friends showed up in support of Windslowe, including her parents and her sister Sherrie Johnson. Johnson told the judge that Windslowe has always been creative. "Padge has never been a person to hurt or harm anyone," she said.

Rudenstein said the sentence was in the standard-guideline range.

Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Windslowe to 30 to 60 years in prison, just below the maximum of 35 to 70 years.

Windslowe had performed as a gothic hip-hop artist under the stage name "Black Madam" and ran an escort service.

"I have to live with Claudia's death on my mind, and it's not a good feeling," she said.