Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - DEVILISH MOM & DAUGHTER DUO RUN AFTER "PATIENT" DIES FROM ILLEGAL GARAGE BUTT-LIFT

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

A mother/daughter team was arrested after a botched Brazilian butt lift leads to the death of an aspiring social media star. Karissa Rajpaul was undergoing her third procedure, conducted inside a private Encino home. She died from acute respiratory failure from dangerous silicone injections. Detectives say these two untrained women arrested in the case, Libby Adame and her daughter Alicia Gomez, have been performing these procedures for years.  Joining Nancy Grace Today: Dr. Terry J. Dubrow MD, F.A.C.S., "Botched" and ""7 Year Stitch" on E!, Author: "Dr. and Mrs. Guinea Pig Present The Only Guide You'll Ever Need to the Best Anti-Aging Treatments", "The Dubrow Diet: Interval Eating to Lose Weight and Feel Ageless" and "The Dubrow Ket Fusion Diet”, www.drdubrow.com, Instagram/Twitter @drdubrow David Woodruff - Denver Trial Lawyers, Represented Emmalyn Nguyen's Family Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst (Beverly Hills, CA), DrBethanyMarshall.com, New Netflix show: 'Bling Empire' (Beverly Hills) Karen L. Smith - Forensic Expert, Lecturer at the University of Florida, Host of Shattered Souls Podcast, @KarensForensic, barebonesforensic.com Nicole Partin - CrimeOnline.com Investigative Reporter, Twitter: @nicolepartin  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Talk about a mother and daughter act. I don't know what images that conjures up in your mind. Mother-daughter act. I bet it has nothing to do with the death of a 26 year old young girl who's guilty of one thing. She wanted to look better. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111 first of all take a listen to our friends at ABC 7. Carissa Rajpal seen in a video posted

on social media undergoing butt augmentation Rajpal had two procedures performed illegally at a home in Encino last September. She died after getting a third procedure. Police say Lydia Adame and her daughter Alicia Gomez presented themselves as specialists. Both have been arrested on murder charges. These individuals have no medical training. They are not experienced and they are putting people's lives and health at risk. Investigators suspect the women injected Rajpal with some substances used by qualified cosmetic physicians, but combined them with dangerous chemicals. They were mixing them with other chemicals and other substances that clearly are not appropriate

for any kind of medical procedure that would be performed on a human. You know, sometimes I think I've heard it all. I've heard of mixing silicone with cement mix, sawdust, you name it, and that being injected into people's bodies as plastic surgery. A sure ticket straight to the morgue. With me, an all-star panel to make sense of what we know right now but first i want to go to special guest dr terry j dubrow uh star of botch seven year itch on e i mean it goes on and on and on i just i can't even put in all your qualifications dr terry dubrow thank you for being with us and taking time out of your schedule dr dub, what is happening? This is a mother and daughter, what, performing butt lifts in their garage? What?

Unfortunately, Nancy, this is more common than people may realize. This is part of what's called the pumping party phenomenon, where unlicensed people... Hold on. Wait a minute. P-U-M-P-I-N-G. Pumping party. I mean, I've heard of a Botox party. Yeah. And I just always a bunch of rich socialites sitting around a brunch getting injected, you know, with their grand piano in the background. I mean, that's just what I imagine. I've never heard of a pumping party. What's that? So, a pumping party is where unlicensed practitioners go to, believe it or not, places like hardware stores and get crazy glue, caulking material. I was right in the middle of

a sip of my favorite tea and you said hardware store. So far in my career, I haven't spit out anything on air, but it was very close. Pick it up with hardware store, Dr. Dubrow. What? Yeah, they go to these hardware stores and they get this material that is supposed to be what's called inert. It's not supposed to react to the human body, but of course it's not sterile. Once it's injected into the buttock, it can get infected. But in these cases where these practitioners are causing death, there's very short blood vessels in the buttock area that are directly connected to the main vessel bringing blood back to the heart called the vena cava. If you inject it in those little blood vessels and it gets in the main vessel, it goes right to the right side of your heart to your lungs and it literally kills you right then and there.

I'm just trying to take in everything you just said. Remember, doctor, I'm a JD. You're the MD. Could you just pick it up one more time for those of us that have never heard about pumping parties in hardware stores? Could you just say all that again? Did you say caulk? Did he say caulk? Yes. Go ahead. Caulking. Okay. So these practitioners are trying to fill up people's buttocks to enhance their buttock. It's a buttock augmentation. They go to a hardware store and they pick up these materials that are designed to be used during house construction. And a common one is glue or caulking materials, the material that you put between tiles in your bathroom that's sealant, those are things they inject in the

buttock to make the buttock bigger. Unfortunately, they can get into the main blood vessel that brings blood back to your heart. It clogs up the arteries that supply your lungs and you essentially inject it directly into your lungs and death ensues. And it's actually more common than I think people realize. Dr. Dubrow, joining me, star of Botch, 7-Year Itch on E, author of Dr. and Mrs. Guinea Pig Present, the only guide you'll ever need to the best anti-aging treatments. That's certainly a mouthful. Dr. Dubrow, I don't understand something.

They didn't teach me this in criminal law. I thought when you inject anything, just to say a shot, a vaccine, anything, I thought when you inject something into your body that it goes through all of your blood vessels, it goes all over your body that you can't differentiate between where it's going to go in this vein or not in the vein to your heart. I didn't know you could even differentiate that. Yes. I mean, if you think about when people get facial filler, these fillers are designed to be injected into the soft tissue. Absolutely. You have to avoid the blood vessels because if you get in the blood vessels and it clogs the blood vessels.

I see what you're saying. It's supposed to go in the muscle tissue and not into the vein. Exactly. The soft tissue alone, not the blood vessels. See, it only took three tries for me to figure that out. Thank you, Dr. Dubrow. I want to get back to what's happening right now. Dr. Dubrow, I blame, and of course, she's not legally liable. But I think this was the tipping point that really pushed the whole butt implants, fake silicone treatments phenomena over the cliff.

Take a listen to our cut nine. This is Danny Hoyt at Celebified. Did Kim Kardashian officially break the internet? The infamous reality star took to her Instagram to share her provocative cover photos for Paper Magazine's 2014 winter issue, taken by famed French photographer Jean-Paul Gaudet. One photo shows Kim exposing her bare, oiled-up bootay, Kim's most well-known asset, while the other features her fully clothed, balancing a champagne glass on her end table.

"'And they say I didn't have talent,' Kim captioned. "'Try balancing a champagne glass on your ass, lol.'" No thanks, Kimmy, I'm good. "'The Race of Your Cover' has, naturally, "'spawned hundreds of butt-themed memes, "'so whether or not she broke the internet, "'she's certainly the butt of its jokes. What do you think of her paper magazine covers?

High fashion or hot mess? But now people are dying, dying. To David Woodruff, you may know his name in legal circles. We all know his name. Denver trial lawyer who represented Emmeline Jen's family, another victim, very similar to Carissa in the case we're covering right now. David Woodruff, nothing has happened. It's all the same. And now we've got another dead body. It's unbelievable, Nancy. And the word spread around the world about Emmeline's death.

And here we go. People having continuing as Dr. Dubrow puts out having parties to do this together. It's a real shame that the generation has gone this direction. And I played that from Kim Kardashian. It's certainly not Kim Kardashian's fault that people are going to pumping parties in hardware stores and having caulk that you put between bathroom tiles injected into their rear ends. But I can guarantee you one thing, one thing, David Woodruff, Kim Kardashian, Kim K didn't get her rear end injected in a hardware store. Obviously, these women had no interest in protecting the patient's safety at all,

if you can call them patients. We're talking to Dr. Terry J. Dubrow, star of Botched and 7-Year Stitch on E, and David Woodruff, high-profile lawyer out of Denver who just represented the family of a young girl, Emmalyn Nguyen. Take a listen to our Cut 10 from the Denver Channel. Emelyn Nguyen walked into Colorado Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in Greenwood Village last summer, ready for an image change. She was so excited. After months of saving for a breast augmentation. Just preparing herself for her new image. Her mom, Lynn Pham, assured her daughter she'd be fine.

But the minutes and hours ticked by. So the doctor was just trying to tell me that Emelyn is fine and she's healthy. But she wasn't. Nguyen ended up in a coma, and after being rushed to the hospital, doctors say she suffered a severe brain injury. The family attorney... This should never happen. You know, I've got a question.

How old was Emelyn, David Woodruff? Emelyn was 18 years old. She had just graduated from high school. Emmeline is dead, and we publicized it. We covered it. David Woodruff has been screaming it from the church spires and the top of the mountains, but yet now we have more deaths. Take a listen now to our friends at NBC4.

He says Adame advertised on social media as Latia, a usually endearing term in the Latino community, and that the procedure was done in a private residence in Encino, showing NBC4 the evidence he secured in a search warrant. These items can be transported to the private home. These are the bare necessities to perform these procedures, you know, minus the heart monitors, the blood pressure, and any medical equipment for any contingencies for the likelihood of an emergency. They just didn't have them? They just didn't have them. No doctors do this. Board certified Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. A.J. Khalil says injecting liquefied silicone into the buttocks is not only illegal, it can be

deformative at best, deadly at worst. Okay, Dr. Terry J. Dubrow joining me, start of Botch and seven-year stitch on E. You know, but that's just a sideline. He is a certified, a board-certified plastic surgeon. Dr. Dubrow, did you hear that? Minus the heart equipment, the heart monitor, and all of the medical equipment you need in case something goes wrong. So basically minus everything you need for a procedure like this.

You know, Nancy, it's disgusting. But at the end of the day, they're not trained medical people anyway. They wouldn't even know what to do with the emergency equipment. It would be useless. At the end of the day, this is the practice of medicine without a license is extraordinarily dangerous. And unfortunately, this has been going on since the early 2000s. Deaths have occurred for the last two decades from illegal buttock injections. They get right into the blood vessels supplying the heart and it's over. And there's no way to stop it. The reason it occurs is because people want it done.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. What's so amazing here is you've got a mother daughter tag team performing illegal butt lifts ending in death take a listen to our friends at cbs2 detectives in van nuys say this mother daughter duo performed an illegal butt lift procedure that killed 26 year old carissa rajpaul in october of 2019 and they tell us there may be other victims that these things are done by people with no training. There's no standards. There's no contingency if something goes wrong. According to investigators, 51-year-old Libby Adame and her daughter, 23-year-old Alicia Galas, have been doing the procedures out of their home since at least 2012. Investigators say the women

charged nearly $14,000 for three sessions. This is video of Rajpal's second one. She sent the clip to her mother in South Africa to ease her worries, but the 26-year-old died after her third session. As a lot of our family members are, they're totally blindsided by this. The cause of death was silicone embolism in the heart, brain, and kidneys. What does that mean, silicone embolism, Dr. Dubrow? So an embolism means when you inject silicone directly into a blood vessel and what it's called embolize, it moves from that blood vessel to an organ and cuts off the blood supply to the organ.

The most common cause of death is cuts off the blood supply to the lungs that you basically asphyxiate. You can't supply your arteries with oxygen anymore and you die on the spot. The fascination of a mother-daughter tag team in this case, ending in the death of Carissa Rich Paul. Joining me, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, Nicole Parton. Nicole, thank you for being with us. What happened? So this mother-daughter duo advertise on social media and they offer these cosmetic procedures at a fraction of the cost. So this beautiful young lady who contacts them is wanting to get this butt lift. She sets up three sessions with them and she has two of the sessions which go okay that third session she all of a sudden has complications as if things couldn't get any worse the mother daughter duo call 9-1-1 but then leave

the scene basically leaving her there to die so when paramedics get to the home, they have no idea. They're unaware of the procedure that's happened. She dies in the emergency room with the attending physicians unaware that she has been injected with this household silicone. Had they stayed and at least let the authorities know what had happened, there may have been a chance of survival. But they fled the scene, not even telling anyone what had happened. You know, Dr. Bethany, I don't get it.

Who would walk into someone's home for a surgical procedure and what? Have the procedure done on the kitchen table or at a hardware store? Who does that? Nancy, these women are believable, the ones who perform these injections. They have rationalized to themselves, this mother-daughter team, that they're helping society, that they're making money, that they are doing something even better than the plastic surgeons are doing. They are offering beauty procedures at a discounted rate. And this mother-daughter team, like other criminals,

like other con artists, like other snake oil salesmen, they have told themselves this You don't have to go to the plastic surgeon and pay $15,000. You can pay us $3,500. And it is the same thing. They say it and the victim, the person, the 18-year-old, the 26-year-old wants to look beautiful and doesn't have the resources. And so they fall prey. And, you know, it's not just 18-year-old and 26- have the resources. And so they fall prey. And you know, it's not just 18 year old and 26 year olds. It's women all over the world who do not have financial resources. These are the victims. It's transgender women who are desperate to inhabit a new kind of body and they're afraid to go to a plastic surgeon. It's women on the

fringes of society. It's porn stars maybe who really, they want to look beautiful, but maybe they're afraid to go into a doctor's office. So as is the case with most victims, they are people who are in a very vulnerable, fragile position to begin with. You know, I think it's somehow gotten to be acceptable. I want to go to David Woodruff about the youth of these victims. And I'm going to go to Dr. Dubrow, Dr. Terry Dubrow from Botch and Seven Year Stitch about the fact that it's seemingly become acceptable because I mentioned Botox parties where it's almost like a baby shower or a wedding shower where women get together at someone in someone's home and they all get Botox. That sounds dangerous to me. Well, this is Dr. DeBrow.

Botox, at least it's legal and it's almost always done by a trained professional I think it's unseemly to do it in someone's house where there's alcohol being poured and it's a non-medical environment but at least it's legal and it's not experimental whereas illegal injections of silicone don't work they're inappropriate their complication rate is about 80 percent and they're dangerous. So Botox parties for me are not appropriate and unseemly, but at least it's not, frankly, illegal and grossly dangerous. You know, David Woodruff joining me, high profile lawyer out of Denver. And I first became familiar with him with the case of a teen girl, Emlyn Nguyen. And she died after illegal surgery, botched plastic surgery, a teen girl. And now we see this girl,

Carissa Rochepaul, an aspiring actress, as Dr. Bethany was pointing out, that couldn't afford to go to a real doctor and have real plastic surgery. David Woodruff, I understand that these two, the mom and daughter, Libby Adame and Alicia, the daughter, advertised online and they targeted people just like Carissa and reeled them in like fish. It's unbelievable, Nancy. And, you know, frankly, it's a failure, not just by these two criminals, but by society for buying into this garage kind of procedure when we, we do have professionals, medical professionals like Dr. Dubrow who are trained for a decade to do plastic surgery and do it safely in

a safe environment. And for criminals like these two ladies to, to reel people in like fish and dangle a carrot over them that they can have a similar outcome for a small amount of money is disgusting, just like Dr. Dubrow points out. And it's reckless. From a legal perspective, it is far beyond simply failing to use reasonable care. This is a reckless disregard for people's lives. And it's quite obvious to anyone that injecting silicone that you buy at Home Depot into a

person's body is highly likely to kill them. Okay, wait a minute. Wait a minute. David Woodruff, you just said silicone like you buy at Home Depot. What? I thought this was silicone, for instance, that people use to get breast implants or that they put in as facial fillers. Why did you just say silicone like you get at Home Depot? So the silicone implants, and Dr. Dubrow can talk a little bit about this, but the silicone implants that are used for breast augmentation are developed and approved by the FDA and they

contain a casing that prevents the silicone from being released into the bloodstream. These women were literally buying products like silicone caulking that you can use that you use to fill your bathtub. Oh, dear Lord. That's why you keep saying caulking. Yep. And they concoct this liquefied silicone and inject it. Yeah, but goo, exactly. And they're injecting it into people's bodies and taking a chance that it's not going to absorb into the bloodstream, which in this poor young woman, it did, killing her instantly.

Well, you just said that silicone breast implants are safe, but can't they rupture and the silicone actually go seep into your body? So silicone can rupture, but it's a semi-solid silicone. It doesn't spread throughout the body when it ruptures. It stays locally, what's called encapsulated. But let me make one point very clear. There is no medical grade silicone that exists that's legal for even doctors to inject in the human body. It's not something we are allowed to do in micro droplets, sometimes in the eye. Rarely an ophthalmologist will use it. But there is no such thing as legal injectable silicone that doctors are allowed to use. I didn't know that. It's got to be, for instance, in one of those pouches like a breast implant. That's exactly right. It's got a silicone shell on the outside. Well, what is it that plastic surgeons injected to people's faces? What is that? I thought that was silicone. No, that's called hyaluronic acid, which is a naturally occurring substance okay that sounds even worse

well no no acid is naturally occurring substance what it's called hyaluronic acid all of our cells have within them a substance called hyaluronic acid it's actually the thing that keeps your joints lubricated okay you know what dr deprow this is what i do when my children talk gibberish i go because i don't know what they're saying let me just take the takeaway from this is that you cannot inject silicone into your body it's got to be encapsulated in something like a breast implant let me just let that percolate before you start telling me about acid that is created normally. Hey, wait a minute, Karen Smith, I have not forgotten you because I want to go to you after Dr. Bethany about mother, daughter, mother, child crimes. Okay, go ahead, Dr. Bethany. Okay, I have a friend,

a colleague, a plastic surgeon. Man, you've got a lot of friends, Dr. Basley, because no matter what criminal case I cover, you either have a client, a patient, or a friend that somehow mirrors the crime. But okay, go ahead. Well, he removes polymers from victims who have been injected from around the world. He does this sort of like a ministry, something he does to help out. What is a polymer? A polymer, your doctors could describe it better who are on the show, but it's an illegally injected substance. And these polymers, they degrade over time. So he showed me the pictures and they are horrible. These are women who have had their buttocks, their calves, their breasts injected.

And these are mothers, these are wives, and they don't degrade quickly. It's like a slow drip towards death. And by the time they get to his office, often they're black, they're cancerous, they're beginning to leak throughout the body. The woman has had unidentified pain for years, arthritis, migraines, low energy, fatigue, and their health deteriorates to the point where they can't walk at some point. So, you know, we're covering a story about a woman who died after her third injection. There are women all over the world who are facing slow, crippling deaths, and they don't

even know what's causing the deaths until it comes to some kind of medical attention and that's because of injections uh plastic surgery injections these are something called yeah jump in polymers yeah well they're they're like a synthetic material like a plastic but let me can i make one point, that I think that is not being discussed that I think is really important. I, like you, don't ever want to victim blame, but I have treated literally hundreds of patients who've had these foreign substances from all over the world. We highlight this on botch every season. But at the end of the day, when you speak to these women who've had these complications from illegal pumping party injections. They all knew it was wrong. They all knew it was dangerous.

They had all seen the reports, but they had a friend that had it done by these illegal practitioners, and it worked for their friend. So they thought, well, maybe I'll go to the next pumping party. So at the end of the day, we're certainly not victim blaming, but these patients are very aware that this is a dangerous practice, that people have been murdered by this practice. Dr. Dubrow, you know how I feel about you. I love you.

I think you're wonderful. But please, OK, you could say that about drinking and driving. We all know it's wrong. But yet why are so many people dead and doing it? We all know cocaine is wrong. We all know heroin is wrong. We know Oxy is wrong. But people do it. They do it. I know. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. crime stories with nancy grace karen smith help me out with me karen l smith forensic expert lecturer university florida

host of a hit series shattered souls podcast and you can find her at Karen's Forensic. Karen, the phenomena of a mother leading their child astray. I'm talking about mother, daughter, mother, son, tag teams in crime. The first time I saw it, and you and I've talked about this off air, as I recall,

one day out in L.A., the Sante Kimes case. Take a listen to Tom Hawley, News 3 LV. It was a sensational set of crimes that made national news in the late 90s. The con artist and murder team of Sante Kimes and her son, Kenny. The two became household names when they were indicted on charges of kidnapping and killing an elderly New York socialite. 19 years earlier, Sante Kimes had been arrested in Las Vegas for both grand and petty larceny, even though she was married to a wealthy motel owner. Sante and her husband, Kenneth Sr., were arrested for enslaving illegal immigrant maids. Sante, Kenneth, and their son Kenny lived here at 2121 Geronimo Lane in Paradise Palms. They added arson to their list of crimes.

But the more serious charges came that summer. Now, she and her son are at the center of an investigation into the disappearance of a New York City millionaire, 82-year-old Irene Silverman, last seen July 5th. So far, the evidence is circumstantial, but the case is building against Kimes and her son, Kenneth. The two were arrested after Silverman's disappearance on a different charge. But mother and son were found guilty, and there was more. David Kasdan, his body found in a trash bin at the L.A. airport earlier this year. It's suspected he transferred ownership of this house over to the Kimes shortly before his death. That was a mother-son con team that ended up in multiple murders. And here you've got a mother-daughter con team that has ended up in

at least one murder and God only knows what else. What about it, Karen Smith? How often have you seen a mother, the one you should trust the most in the world, leading the child, the adult child, down the path of destruction. This is really unusual, Nancy, very unusual. You know, you have parents who will discount their child's criminal behavior, you know, mitigate and say, you know, it was a rough childhood or whatever like that. But a team, to team up like that, that's something that's really unusual. And something I'd like to point out, this mother and daughter were taking cash only, no cash, no service. That's untraceable. And that's problematic for a few reasons. Obviously, they were doing it so they wouldn't, A, have to report taxes. B, they could be cash only so that

their patients were untraceable. So now if there are more people, they have to self-report. They may be embarrassed. They may not want to come forward because of social judgment. But another thing, they left this young woman to die. They fled. They dialed 911 and they ran. So that goes to, you know, you're the lawyer, the mens rea, the guilty mind. They knew what they were doing was completely illegal. They knew that this girl was going to die and they fled the scene. She's absolutely right, David Woodruff. You're hearing Karen L. Smith, forensic expert and star of Shattered Souls podcast, now a hit series. David Woodruff, it's called flight. And while many judges are no longer allowed under the law to state it from the criminal code in jury instructions, it can still be argued to juries that, for instance, when I see a state patrolman come up behind me and I'm doing 70 MPH, I may tap the brakes, but I don't take off running because that's

called flight and it is probative of guilt. And that's just what this mother and daughter did. They grabbed each other's hands and took off. There was nothing but tail hole and elbows. That's all you could see. They were running. And that indicates to me they knew they had done a horrible thing. That's right. And as Karen Smith points out, the flight is evidence that they knew prior to even beginning this procedure that they were taking the risk of killing someone. And everyone knows that if you want to kill somebody,

injecting a silicone mix that you buy at Home Depot or at Walmart into their blood is a good way to do it. And that's why they fled, because they knew exactly what they'd done. And their friend was there. If you read the story, this young lady's friend was there watching as she started to go into respiratory and cardiac arrest. And that's why they left, because he was screaming at them for help. And instead of calling 911, they fled. Nicole Parton, joining me, investigative reporter of TheCrimeOnline.com. Were they actually videoing the process? So they were not videoing, but Carissa herself videoed, put a couple of images on her social media network.

Right. When I said they, I meant Carissa and the friend. Yes. Because this was like a big event for them. They had really no idea. Now, Dr. Dubrow says that people know it's wrong. I'm not sure that individuals this young and as young as Emmalyn was before her death. Yeah, they know that there is a risk, but I don't think they believe there's anything wrong with it. I don't believe they understand they could die.

In fact, this young girl was videoing the whole experience. You know, like I just videoed the twins graduating from middle school because it was a big deal. She's videoing it. It tells me something, Dr. Bethany. Dr. Bethany, you know about my extensive set of scrapbooks that I labor over for the twins. And because they're moments I never want to forget. That is ringing. It's like an echo. This girl, Carissa, had her friend there and they were videoing the whole thing because it was such a great event in her life. I think you can know and not know. Like the woman that goes on the dating site and the guy sounds a little creepy and you think, well, probably shouldn't go out with him. You know what?

I really want to find a husband. Maybe this time it'll be different. It's really rationalizing to yourself that something that you know deep in your core might not work out. Hey, maybe this time it'll be an exception. We all build narratives to justify to ourselves whatever it is we want to do or whatever it is we feel we need to do to make ourselves feel better. You know, we could call it disavowal, seeing something and not seeing it all at the same time. So I think the victim knows on the one hand and doesn't know on the other. And that's the sad part is they disregard their own intuition. Guys, take a listen to our cut for our friend

John Klimak at NBC4. One of two women charged with the murder of an aspiring film star for allegedly injecting her butt with an illegal silicone mixture. Now in court for the first time, the judge granting NBC4 access, in her her words to ensure public trust in the judicial system no plea entered today Alicia Gallas and her mother Libya Dhammeh are accused of practicing medicine without a license injecting women with some sort of silicone mixture and then when the procedure went awry fleeing the scene man can you just tell us do you do you believe that you injected these people with poison?

Did you want to at least defend yourself in any way? Anything at all? No words outside the courtroom from the accused. Guys, I want you to hear one more piece of sound about what we're learning about the procedure, Hour Cut 1. Our friends at NBC4.

It is dangerous and it is costing women their lives in the San Fernando Valley. LAPD says they believe there are more victims out there. And if that's you, they want to hear from you. The voices you're hearing belong to two women now behind bars. The woman on the operating table was 26-year-old Carissa Rajpaul, an aspiring film star who moved to L.A. from South Africa, but died last October. As we looked into this investigation, we we did find that it is occurring a lot. LAPD Valley Bureau homicide detective Bob Dinlocker says Raj Paul had undergone three butt augmentations. This video is from her second. She completed all three and died immediately following number three. Libby Adame and her daughter Alicia Gomez

are now charged with murder for allegedly injecting Rajpal with a liquid silicone mix. The internet is filled with these horror stories where they're cutting the medical grade silicone with the stuff that you would clock your windows with. It hits the bloodstream. It attacked the heart and the brain and the kidneys. That is exactly what Dr. Dubrow is telling us. And also our cut five, one of this mother-daughter tag teams, victims survived. Listen. One of her alleged surviving victims did want to speak up. Is that the woman that did this to you? That's the daughter. Taryn Quinteri spoke to us from a recovery house in Columbia, where she's still in the process of correcting what she says was done wrong to her four years ago.

The daughter is part of what made me like feel OK doing it because she was like, look, I have them. You know, the daughter definitely helped sell me. Quinteri says she wanted a bigger butt, paid three thousand dollars for the procedure to Adame and her daughter. Six months later, a rash formed and it wouldn't go away. She says whatever was injected into her made its way into her muscle tissue. I had some migrate to my legs and I had some near my sciatic nerve, which I have to have a whole separate surgery for that done by a separate surgeon. It's why she's in Columbia now. She says a doctor was able to remove only 50% of whatever it is that's still in her body. It's as serious as this. I

could die from this at one day and there's no way to get this out of me as of today. Dr. Terry J. Dubrow joining us from Botch and Seven Year Stitch on E. Dr. Dubrow, please, if you could translate everything that we just heard. And I don't see how this is any different from injecting someone with pure poison and they die. It's very similar. So they take this material, this foreign body they get from hardware stores. They inject it into various parts of the body and two things happen. Either you get into a blood vessel and it blocks off an organ or your lungs and you die, or over time, at best, your body reacts to it. Your immune system activates its surveillance systems and causes an inflammatory reaction

as the material migrates to other parts of your body and it causes other kinds of inflammatory changes that are really difficult to fit so just I want to warn everyone out there you know anyone who's ever thinking about having foreign body injected at these pumping parties warn them that even if they get away with it in the short term that that in the longer term, it's like having a sleeping giant in there. And you wake up this sleeping giant and it wreaks havoc over your entire body and it literally guarantees you will have a problem in the future. So don't ever do this.

Denver trial lawyer David Woodruff, I guarantee you they're going to get off light. I mean, they've already made bond. Can you hear their high heels clicking along as they were talking and some of that sound? They're already out on bond. We can certainly hope that they will be back in jail before long, Nancy. There's no question that murder charges against these two women are valid and are going to stick, in my opinion. Because, as you know, the men's ray, which you talked about earlier, their intent when they performed this procedure was to do something that any reasonable person would know could result in death. And I'd like to blame just the mom, David Woodruff.

But you heard one victim say, hey, the daughter really sold it. She said, look, I had it. And that's the reason I did it. Yeah. And one of the things that Dr. Bethany pointed out earlier is really valid here, which is these women are who are looking for this, this kind of improvement in their body image. They are receiving validation from these liar criminals who are injecting them with illegal substances. They look for some support. And these are smooth criminals that are telling them, I can make you look better for a discount. Let me do it. And they're falling for it. And that's exactly what happened here. That's why these murder charges are so appropriate. You are hearing David Woodruff, high-profile Denver trial lawyer, whose one of his expertise is this exact kind of case,

along with Dr. Dubrow, Dr. Bethany Marshall, Karen Smith, and Nicole Parton. If you have been a victim of these women, call 818-374-9550. Repeat, 818-374-9550. Don't let them get away with this. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.