'Black Madam' a blackmailer, doctor says

The affair was in 1993 and lasted three months.

But one suburban doctor says the dalliance with "Black Madam" Padge Victoria Windslowe cost decades of personal anguish, demands for money, and involvement in a criminal probe of her silicone buttocks-enhancement business.

James Taterka, a Montgomery County gastroenterologist, told a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury Tuesday that he was ashamed of cheating on his wife and humiliated that he and his medical practice had been dragged into Windslowe's murder trial. Windslowe, 43, has been charged with third-degree murder in the 2011 death of a 20-year-old exotic dancer who received silicone injections from her.

Taterka's reason for testifying for the prosecution was to affirm that neither he nor his Flourtown-based medical group, Hillmont GI, ordered 58 gallons of industrial-grade silicone liquid from a Texas company between Dec. 18, 2007, and Jan. 31, 2011.

Investigators testified that the shipments from Neely Industries went to Hillmont GI and Hillman Facilities at an address on Montgomery Avenue in Narberth, and later to an address on the 1600 block of North 62d Street in Philadelphia.

Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega alleges that Windslowe placed the orders.

Taterka said he never ordered silicone and did not use it in his medical practice. Nor did he or his practice ever have offices at those addresses, he said.

Taterka also denied showing Windslowe how to inject substances into the body or helping her obtain supplies for her buttocks enhancement business.

"I already said that what I did was stupid, reprehensible, and a sign of personal failure," Taterka said. "But the mistakes, the stupidity, was all personal. I never compromised my professional integrity."

Windslowe is on trial in the Feb. 8, 2011, death of Claudia Aderotimi, an exotic dancer from London who died after Windslowe injected her buttocks with silicone.

Windslowe is also charged with aggravated assault for injecting stripper Sherkeeia King in February 2012 at a "pumping party" at an East Germantown house. King, 23, was hospitalized after the silicone in her buttocks spread through her bloodstream to her heart and lungs.

In questioning Taterka, defense lawyer David S. Rudenstein focused on his relationship with Windslowe and asked whether the doctor was embarrassed because he began the affair when Windslowe, who is transgender, was "in transition" from man to woman.

"An affair is an affair," Taterka replied. "I cheated on my wife, and I didn't want her to know about it."

The affair continued for three months before he ended it, Taterka said. But every few years, he continued, Windslowe would call. A few meetings ended in sex, he said, but inevitably, Windslowe wanted money.

Taterka said he bought her a used Lexus and gave her $10,000 on one occasion, and $5,000 later to help her get a soundstage for her dream of a recording career as a Gothic hip-hop artist.

When he balked at paying, Taterka said, there were calls to his wife, threats to post an embarrassing video of him on YouTube, and postings on his son's Facebook page. There was also a posting on Buzzfeed showing Taterka's photo under the headline "Bad Doctor."

"The Philadelphia medical community will be shocked when they learn the doctor trained and supplied and loved the Black Madam," the Buzzfeed post read.

"This has been a continuing nightmare for me," he said.