'Black Madam' client recounts fight for life

They had dated since 2004, had visited England and France, and shared an Ardmore house for two years.

But Nikolaus Banks said it was not until he was being questioned by detectives on Feb. 10, 2011, that he learned the full extent of girlfriend Padge Victoria Windslowe's lucrative sideline and how it had gone horribly awry.

Banks, 29, testified in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court on Friday during the second day of Windslowe's trial on third-degree murder charges in the Feb. 8, 2011, death of Claudia Aderotimi, a 20-year-old exotic dancer from London who flew to Philadelphia for a buttocks-enhancement procedure: silicone injections from Windslowe.

Banks said that on the afternoon of Feb. 7, 2011, Windslowe, 43, was driving him to work when she mentioned that "a girl she did a side job on that morning became sick and had some sort of bad reaction."

The "girl" was Aderotimi, who developed chest pains during the illegal procedure at an airport hotel, and died early Feb. 8 at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby Borough.

In addition to third-degree murder in Aderotimi's death, Windslowe is charged with aggravated assault for injections she gave 23-year-old exotic dancer Shurkia King in February 2012 at a "pumping party" in an East Germantown home. King was hospitalized, vomiting blood and struggling to breathe. Doctors found that the silicone in her buttocks had migrated through her bloodstream to her heart and lungs.

Nervous and argumentative as he was questioned by Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega, Banks said he tried to learn more about the "bad reaction" but Windslowe would not elaborate.

"She said she'd keep me posted," Banks said.

Dressed in work clothes and wearing an orange highway worker's safety vest, Banks was a stark contrast to the woman at the defense table, hair pulled back to the side in a ponytail, made up like a fashion model, and wearing a full-length coat over a white sweater and skirt.

During a break, Banks looked nervously at the woman he says he still loves and talks to regularly, though she is being held in prison on $750,000 bail. Windslowe smiled back warmly and patted her heart three times with her right palm.

Vega, interrupted regularly by objections by defense attorney David S. Rudenstein, tried with limited success to delve into the relationship between Banks and Windslowe, which Banks described almost as separate lives lived under one roof in Ardmore.

Banks said he knew little about Windslowe's nascent attempt at making Gothic hip-hop videos under the name "Black Madam." He said he thought she earned a living selling beads and a "skin-lightening product."

Banks said he knew nothing about Windslowe's buttocks-enhancing sideline, marketed under several names including "Body by Lillian."

And he only reluctantly admitted that Windslowe told him once in 2008 that she did "enhancements on women." Nor did Banks ever see the tools of her trade - hypodermic needles, silicone liquid, Crazy Glue, and cotton balls - around their house.

Earlier Friday, another former Windslowe client, Melissa Lisath, 33, a classroom aide, testified about her trip from New York to Philadelphia in September 2008 to get silicone injections in her buttocks.

On her drive back to New York, Lisath testified, she began having trouble breathing. By that night, Lisath said, she was hospitalized in a coma after the silicone wound up in her lungs.

When she regained consciousness, Lisath said, she was on a ventilator and had drainage tubes implanted in her lungs and was beginning what would be a three-month hospital stay, followed by surgery and five more weeks in the hospital.

"I'm finally well enough to go back to work - two months ago," Lisath said.