A former madam who bragged of doing black-market “body sculpting” on thousands of women was convicted of murder Monday in the death of a dancer who died hours after silicone injected into her buttocks moved to her lungs and stopped her heart.
Padge-Victoria Windslowe’s colorful testimony during her Philadelphia trial included claims that she was “the Michelangelo of buttocks injections” and that model Amber Rose was “a walking billboard” for her work. Yet Windslowe had no medical training, other than tips she said she picked up from overseas doctors who performed her sex change operation and a physician-client of her escort service who became her lover.
“I was the best, and I don’t mean that to be cocky,” Windslowe testified, explaining why celebrities would have sought her out over a licensed plastic surgeon.
Windslowe, 45, described herself as a serial entrepreneur who once ran a transgender escort service and a Gothic hip-hop performer who called herself “the Black Madam.”
Authorities argued that she fled in 2011 after a botched injection killed Claudia Aderotimi, a 20-year-old London break-dancer and college student.
The trial was halted for several days last week while Windslowe was hospitalized after reporting that she had chest pains. She has been in prison since 2012, when the 18-month investigation led to a coroner’s homicide ruling and later an arrest warrant.
The jury got the case late Friday. They were choosing between third-degree murder, which is not premeditated but involves malice, and involuntary manslaughter, which involves reckless disregard for a person’s life.