Philadelphia -
A transgender hip-hop performer who called herself “the Michelangelo of buttocks injections” testified at her murder trial on Thursday she has been haunted since the 2011 death of a client she injected with low-grade silicone.
Padge-Victoria Windslowe, who also rapped under the name “Black Madam,” said she thought the 20-year-old London break-dancer was in distress after the procedure in Philadelphia because she had been drinking alcohol.
She said she reached an intermediary the next morning and was informed of Claudia Aderotimi's death with the words: “R.I.P., Baby.”
“The way she said it was just ... really cold, really indifferent,” Windslowe said.
“I say that because 'R.I.P,' that rang through my soul for four years.”
Windslowe, 45, said she has injected “thousands” of people since being trained by a doctor in Thailand and one in South America who performed her 1994 sex-change operation.
Prosecutors say Windslowe's reckless injections injured numerous clients, several of whom testified of debilitating injuries after their procedures at airport hotels and “pumping parties” went awry.
Investigators this week told jurors Windslowe ordered silicone by the gallon and syringes by the case in a side business that she ran under the name “Lillian.”
On the stand on Thursday, Windslowe said she first went into the cosmetic surgery business in Thailand, when she was trained by a “Dr Chimcoke,” and ultimately opened a medical tourism business with him called “The Secrets of the Orient.”
Her role was to organise group trips for Americans, she said.
Her other entrepreneurial efforts have included running an escort service; making Gothic rap music under the Wrath Entertainment record label; Svengali music management services; a bail service for adult entertainers called The Risque Group; and skin care work done under the banner “BioBeauty Labs.”
She first did the enhancements for a transgender friend in 1995.
She did such stellar work, she said, that people of various genders and occupations started demanding it.
“Everyone was calling me 'the Michelangelo of buttocks injections,'“ Windslowe said at a pretrial hearing last week.
Police around the country have investigated at least two similar deaths involving other suspected faux surgeons, but Windslowe may be the first to be charged with murder.
Prosecutors have charged her with third-degree murder, which can bring a sentence of 20 to 40 years in prison in Pennsylvania.
Sapa-AP