Jury may see butt-injecting defendant's self-enhancements

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A hip-hop artist who has testified clients of her side gig call her the "Michelangelo of buttocks injections" may get to show off her own curves to the jury in her murder trial.

A defense lawyer for Padge Victoria Windslowe wants jurors to see the body sculpting the buxom transgender defendant has done on herself.

It's not clear whether the judge will allow the jury to view her work firsthand.

Windslowe, 45, of Philadelphia, is charged with third-degree murder in the 2011 death of a 20-year-old client from London.

An emergency room doctor told jurors Friday that Claudia Aderotimi died after the industrial-grade silicone injected into her buttocks at an airport hotel spread hours later to her blood and lungs.

The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.

Windslowe, known to her clients only as "Lillian," allegedly fled after Aderotimi started having trouble breathing during "a touch-up" to celebrate her birthday.

Unbeknownst to Aderotimi, a native of Nigeria, U.S. border patrol agents were on alert because she and her friends had made two quick trips to the U.S. within a short time. They suspected drugs, not stealth plastic surgery.

As it happened, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped at the Hampton Inn just before and after Aderotimi went to the hospital in an ambulance. But they did take note of the well-dressed woman in a white Land Rover who worked as Windslowe's intermediary, referring Aderotimi and others to Windslowe through online websites.

They traced her license plate to Saddle River, New Jersey, and got leads that the faux surgeon used the nickname "Black Madam" in a Gothic YouTube video. They soon learned Windslowe's name, but it would be more than a year before they could find her.

Windslowe seems eager to tell the jury about her satisfied customers around the globe.

"Everyone was calling me "the Michelangelo of buttocks injections,'" Windslowe said Thursday during a final pretrial hearing. "I go by feeling. ... It's an art."

Yet prosecutors have tallied at least four women who fell ill after the injections, three of whom have testified so far at trial.

Melissa Lisath, a former construction company assistant manager, told the jury Friday that she spent four months in a hospital following injections at a Red Roof Inn in 2008. She spent some of that time in a coma and only recently returned to work.

"I've been on disability since this happened," she said.

Windslowe and her boyfriend were on the move the year after Aderotimi's death, hopping between her sisters' homes, extended-stay hotels and then an apartment near Philadelphia where police finally caught up with them in 2012, the boyfriend testified Friday.

Nikolaus Banks had told police days after the February 2011 death that he knew nothing about Windslowe's side business, music videos or other monikers. But in a third interview the same day he admitted Windslowe had talked about "a situation" as she drove him to work.

She said "that the girl she did (that day) ... became sick and had some sort of reaction," Banks testified. "She didn't seem to be that upset about it."

The trial resumes Monday.