By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH
A Riverside County woman was convicted this week of second-degree murder for injecting silicone oil into a woman’s buttocks just over a year after being found guilty of a lesser charge stemming from another woman’s death under similar circumstances.
The downtown Los Angeles jury deliberated just over a day before finding Libby Adame, 55, guilty on Thursday, Oct. 9, of the murder charge in connection with the March 24 death of Cindyana Santangelo, 59, of Malibu, along with a count of practicing medicine without certification.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta ordered Adame to be held without the possibility of bail while awaiting sentencing on Nov. 5. She is facing 15 years to life in state prison.
Santangelo’s husband, Frank, told reporters outside court that his wife “received the justice she deserved.”
Defense attorney J. Michael Flanagan maintained after the verdict that his client “wasn’t there” when Santangelo received the buttocks injections.
“This is a travesty,” Adame’s attorney said, adding that Adame plans to appeal.
In the previous case, Adame and her daughter, Alicia Galaz, were convicted in March 2024 of involuntary manslaughter — but acquitted of the more serious charge of murder — stemming from the Oct. 15, 2019, death of Karissa Rajpaul, 26, following buttocks injections administered at a Sherman Oaks home.
Adame was also found guilty last year of three counts of practicing medicine without a certification, while her daughter was convicted of two counts of practicing medicine without a certification.
Adame was sentenced in April 2024 to four years and four months in state prison, while her daughter was sentenced to three years and eight months in state prison. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli subsequently agreed with an argument by Galaz’s attorney that the two were entitled to credit for the time they underwent electronic monitoring while out of custody following their August 2021 arrests at the Riverside home they shared.
In her closing argument of the latest case, Deputy District Attorney Lee Cernok told jurors that the judge in Adame’s first trial had warned the defendant in April 2024 that she could be charged with murder the next time.
“Did she know better?” the prosecutor asked jurors of Adame, saying the answer was “a resounding yes.”
Santangelo died after being taken from her home to a nearby hospital, with authorities subsequently determining that her cause of death was an embolism caused by a silicone injection, the prosecutor noted.
“She did not do it,” Adame’s attorney said. “No injections this time by her.”
Adame’s lawyer noted that his client knew she can’t do “butt work” in California, but said the woman known as “The Butt Lady” or “La Tia” was working as a “consultant” on behalf of doctors who can legally perform buttocks injections in Tijuana, Mexico.
The defense attorney contended that his client wouldn’t have had enough time to perform the procedure after arriving at the woman’s house. He said Adame saw that Santangelo already had bandages on her buttocks at the time of the consultation in the 59-year-old woman’s home, arguing that someone else had performed the procedure earlier that resulted in the woman’s death.
Adame testified Monday, denying that she was the one who gave Santangelo any injection the day she died.
“Do you know who did?” her attorney asked.
“No,” the defendant responded.
Adame — who told jurors that she had done thousands of the procedures — said the puncture marks on Santangelo’s buttocks were “too high” and that “it’s not my work.” She testified that the woman told her that she had already gone to a “salon in Malibu.”
The defendant said Santangelo kept clearing her throat from the time she arrived at the home and was “already breathing like she needed air.” She said that the woman’s husband told her to leave after he called 911.
“You just happened to arrive after she got the injections from someone else?” the prosecutor asked Adame.
“Yes,” Adame responded.
Frank Santangelo testified that his wife of 24 years appeared to have been breathing normally before meeting with Adame and wanted a “butt enhancement” to correct lumps in her buttocks from hormone treatment.
He said his wife — who had worked as an actress — subsequently was “struggling to breathe,” was squirming on the massage table and “had blood coming from each butt cheek.”
The woman’s husband testified that Adame told him, “This has never happened to a client of mine before.”
He said Adame told him she might have something in her car that could help the woman and packed her bag, telling jurors that Adame never came back into the house.
Adame was arrested and has remained behind bars since, jail records show.