Feb 26, 2015 4 min read

PHILADELPHIA – A Gothic hip-hop artist who called herself “the Michelangelo of buttocks injections” testified at her murder trial Thursday she got into “body sculpting” 20 years ago to help transgender friends and since performed thousands of procedures.

Padge-Victoria Windslowe, who rapped under the name “Black Madam,” is charged in the death of a college student she injected with low-grade silicone at a Philadelphia airport motel in 2011.

Windslowe said she thought the 20-year-old London break-dancer was in distress afterward because she had been drinking alcohol.

She checked on her through an intermediary the next day and learned she was dead 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.”

Prosecutors said Windslowe’s reckless injections injured numerous clients, several of whom testified of debilitating injuries after their procedures at airport hotels and “pumping parties.” Windslowe ordered silicone by the gallon and syringes by the case.

Windslowe, 45, said she was trained by the doctor in South America who performed her 1994 sex-change operation and another in Thailand, where she first went into the cosmetic surgery business.

She ultimately opened a medical tourism business with a “Dr. Chimchoke” called “The Secrets of the Orient,” saying her role was to organize group trips for Americans.

Windslowe described herself as a serial entrepreneur, with forays running an escort service; making Gothic rap music under the Wrath Entertainment record label; running Svengali music management services; opening a bail service for adult entertainers called The Risque Group; and doing skin care work under the banner “BioBeauty Labs.”

Some of the funding, she said, came from a suburban doctor who used her escort service and became her lover. Windslowe said he gave her $100,000 and the down payments for two luxury cars and wrote prescriptions for some needed medical supplies. The doctor said he was blackmailed.

“Can I talk more about Jim?” she asked dreamily Thursday afternoon. Her lawyer cut her off, and the judge called it a day.

Windslowe first did enhancements for a transgender friend in 1995.

“She (the friend) did it to help sculpt the secondary male characteristics into female, to help transsexuals pass more on the street and basically not get harassed,” Windslowe testified. “So that’s where body sculpting came from.”

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 investigated at least two similar deaths involving other suspected faux surgeons, but Windslowe may be the first to be charged with murder. Her third-degree murder charge could bring a sentence of 20 to 40 years in prison in Pennsylvania if convicted.

She is also charged with aggravated assault for allegedly injuring an exotic dancer at a New Year’s Eve 2011 “pumping party” in Philadelphia, when she injected a group of dancers on a dining room table. The woman spent two weeks in the hospital.

A woman from New York testified about spending months in the hospital with respiratory crisis, some of it in a coma, and others said they feared what problems lie ahead.

Windslowe said it was all about self-esteem.

“I just wanted to … help as many people as I could, because a lot of people had self-esteem issues,” she testified. “I made money, but it wasn’t so much money.”

Clients paid $1,000 per 1,000 cc’s of silicone and sometimes came back for more. Her clients ranged from exotic dancers to a hotel reception clerk to a construction company assistant. The work was often done at airport hotels.

“I loved the camaraderie of being with the girls and hanging out. They called me their fairy godmom,” Windslowe said.

She is set to return to the witness stand Friday morning.