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NewsJune 12, 2015

PHILADELPHIA -- A former madam who performed illegal "body sculpting" was sentenced Thursday to 10 to 20 years in prison for the death of a dancer whose heart stopped after nearly half a gallon of silicone was injected into her buttocks. During her spring murder trial, Padge-Victoria Windslowe told jurors clients call her "the Michelangelo of buttocks injections." But prosecutors say she had no medical training and used deadly products on vulnerable women, including fellow members of the transgender community who wanted curves.. ...

By MARYCLAIRE DALE ~ Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA -- A former madam who performed illegal "body sculpting" was sentenced Thursday to 10 to 20 years in prison for the death of a dancer whose heart stopped after nearly half a gallon of silicone was injected into her buttocks.

During her spring murder trial, Padge-Victoria Windslowe told jurors clients call her "the Michelangelo of buttocks injections." But prosecutors say she had no medical training and used deadly products on vulnerable women, including fellow members of the transgender community who wanted curves.

The judge called her a narcissist who sought fame and fortune as a serial -- if underground -- entrepreneur, but then became childlike when things went wrong.

"I don't think you're evil," Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Rose Marie DeFino-Nastasi told the defendant. "You don't believe that you must follow the rules of society. ... It showed in the courtroom."

Around the country, several women have died and an unknown number of others have been injured from similar cosmetic procedures. Two salon workers in Dallas were charged with murder this week in a February buttocks-injection death.

The judge was especially troubled Windslowe resumed the illegal injections after Claudia Aderotimi died in 2011. Aderotimi, a 20-year-old college student and competitive dancer from London, and a friend had flown in to Philadelphia for $1,800 "touch-ups" with Windslowe in an airport hotel room.

The woman they knew only as "Lillian" arrived with the tools of her trade: a water bottle filled with liquid silicone, a red plastic cup, needles and syringes, and Krazy Glue to close the puncture wounds.

But she apparently struck a vein when she injected Aderotimi. The cheap silicone soon spread to her lungs. She was dead hours later.

"It was not for money. I liked the appreciation they gave me because I was helping them," Windslowe, 45, said Thursdsay. "Being transgender, for so many years ... I was imprisoned in my mind. When someone helped me with those injections, I basically felt like an ugly duckling turned into a swan."

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Windslowe went into hiding for months after the death, but resumed her work at "pumping parties," including one that left a stripper with permanent respiratory problems.

"I'm sure you didn't intend to hurt (Aderotimi)," DeFino-Nastasi said. "But you came back and you did it again. ... That's very troublesome. That's magical thinking."

Prosecutors complained Thursday that Windslowe, while in prison, has been distributing fund-raising fliers for a supposed $50 memorial walk in the victim's name.

The judge ordered her to stop.

Windslowe once ran a transgender escort service and performed as "the Black Madam" in Gothic hip-hop videos.

In her colorful trial testimony, she name-dropped the likes of rappers Nicki Minaj and Kanye West, along with a former Roman Catholic archbishop she claimed had baptized her "Genevieve" after her sex change.

She said clients sought her out all over the world.

"I was the best, and I don't mean that to be cocky," Windslowe told jurors.

They convicted her of third-degree murder -- rejecting a lesser involuntary manslaughter charge -- along with aggravated assault for the stripper's injuries and a weapons charge involving the needle.

The judge ordered six years of probation after her release.

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