IN A CALM but sometimes nervous voice, Padge-Victoria Windslowe, who goes by the stage name "Black Madam," told a Philadelphia Common Pleas jury yesterday that she injected people's butts with silicone to make them feel more beautiful, and intended no ill will or harm.
"My motto was 'I want to help,' " she said, adding that people called her "their fairy godmother."
Windslowe, 45, who was born a man named Forrest Leon Gordon, said she had a sex-change operation in 1994. A year later, she began doing silicone butt injections on friends and on people in the transgender community to make "the male buttock more female," she said.
Then her business started to grow. Asked by her attorney, David Rudenstein, why non-transgender people wanted bigger butts, Windslowe said: "They were human and they still had self-esteem problems and a lot of people felt it made them more womanly, shapely."
A British dancer, Claudia Aderotimi, 20, died shortly after a second round of silicone butt injections.
"When I found out that Claudia died, it was the most horrible day of my life," Windslowe told the jury. "When you're being held accountable for someone's death, it's horrible and wretched. . . . I retreated."
Asked if she went "into hiding," Windslowe said no.
She said she went to her sister's house in Bear, Del., after Aderotimi died on Feb. 8, 2011. "I couldn't sleep and it was really, really bad. Claudia was a really nice girl and I didn't want anything bad to happen," Windslowe testified, becoming emotional.
Windslowe faces third-degree-murder and related charges in the death of Aderotimi, a British citizen. She also is charged with aggravated assault in relation to injuries allegedly suffered by Sherkeeia King, then 23, as a result of being injected by Windslowe at a "pumping party" in February 2012 in East Germantown.
Windslowe said that after she injected Aderotimi at the Hampton Inn near Philadelphia International Airport on Feb. 7, 2011, Aderotimi told her she had imbibed Four Loko, an alcoholic drink with caffeine. She said she had previously told Aderotimi that drinking alcohol beforehand was a no-no.
Aderotimi was coughing but did not appear to be in distress, Windslowe said, so she advised Aderotimi to go to the hospital if it got serious.
Aderotimi had been referred to Windslowe by a then-New Jersey woman named Scheffee Wilson, who was also in the hotel when Aderotimi was injected.
Windslowe said she learned the next morning from Wilson that Aderotimi had died.
Delaware County Medical Examiner Fredric Hellman testified Wednesday that Aderotimi, who had been taken by ambulance from the hotel to Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Delaware County, had died of a pulmonary embolism from silicone butt injections.
Windslowe, who does not have a license to practice medicine, said she received training from a nurse in New York City. She said she never told people that she was a nurse, but "I always said I was trained by a nurse."
She also said she had worked with a doctor in Thailand. And she said a Montgomery County doctor, James Taterka, with whom she'd had a three-month affair in 1993 and whom she contacted from time to time, taught her how to aspirate needles and gave her needles and syringes.
Taterka, who testified Tuesday, said he never showed her how to use a syringe and gave her no medical products.
Windslowe testified that what she injected into people's butts was a "low-grade" silicone mixture called "hydrogel" that she created by emulsifying a Dow Corning silicone fluid with saline solution. "It's not medical-grade, but it's non-toxic," she said. "I know that, because it's in me."
She said she has gotten the low-grade silicone liquid injected into herself, and has also injected herself with it.
"That's the only type I put in me to get my money's worth," she said, indicating that with other products she didn't get the enhancement results she wanted.
Windslowe was dressed in black on the witness stand - blouse, pants, suit jacket, heels and coat. She wore a white-beaded necklace with a white cross.
But at the start of the day, before the jury was brought in, she entered the courtroom wearing an orange-sherbet ruffled, low-neck shirt that showed her cleavage, with matching tight pants.
Windslowe told Rudenstein that she had made the outfit while in jail for more than two years. When Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega came into the courtroom and looked at her outfit, Windslowe smiled and said: "I made it, Carlos."
After Judge Rose Marie DeFino-Nastasi took the bench, the attorneys had a sidebar conference with the judge. Then Rudenstein said to Windslowe, "It's a very pretty outfit. The standard isn't pretty, it's appropriate."
He told her to get changed.
After a short break, Windslowe returned to the courtroom in the more-conservative outfit. She continues her direct testimony today, after which she will face cross-examination by prosecutors.
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