She was known as the “Latina Marilyn Monroe,” and she lost her life pursuing beauty in the pink-walled sanctuary of her $4 million Malibu mansion.
Cindyana Santangelo, 58, bled to death on her massage table after an unlicensed “butt lady” injected deadly silicone into her body on March 24, 2025 — despite the fact that the same woman had already caused a fatality performing the identical procedure.
“It broke my heart,” her husband Frank Santangelo told The California Post exclusively from the sprawling home where his wife of 24 years drew her final breaths.
The “Married… With Children” actress and mother of two had been receiving bioidentical hormone treatments that left her backside “lumpy” and “uneven.” She was excited to smooth things out with a $3,500 butt-lift injection.
“She wanted every part of her to be beautiful,” Santangelo said.
Dubbed the “Latina Marilyn Monroe” for her role in a Jane’s Addiction music video for the song “Stop,” Cindyana found comfort in her upstairs “beauty room,” which featured a pink massage table, a wall of mirrors, and Marilyn Monroe memorabilia.
Around 3:30 p.m., heavily tattooed Libby Adame arrived at the mansion after being referred by Cindyana’s Botox beautician. The actress was fascinated by Adame’s tattoos and photographed the designs on her side and butt.
“My wife, she’s really intrigued about tattoos. So my wife took pictures of all this woman’s tattoos on her side and her butt,” Santangelo said.
At 4 p.m., while in the “beauty room,” Adame, known as the “Butt Lady,” injected Cindyana’s buttocks.
Minutes later, Adame called downstairs asking for watermelon juice. When Santangelo rushed up, he found his wife struggling to breathe, blood dripping from her backside.
“When I got up to the room, I noticed that there was something wrong with her. She was struggling to breathe, my wife’s buttocks, there was blood dripping out of it so there was something that wasn’t right,” Santangelo recalled.
He immediately called 911. Adame told him she had something in her car that might help, but that was a lie. She grabbed Cindyana’s phone and fled, according to Santangelo.
Cindyana told her husband she had never felt such pain in her chest and thought she “was having a heart attack,” he said.
When paramedics arrived, they tried frantically to save her life as she struggled to breathe.
“They tried to sit her up, they laid her down, finally they put her on the stretcher and they were giving her oxygen,” Santangelo said.
She was rushed to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly after 6 p.m. Officials determined that a silicone embolism from the injection caused her death.
“When I saw her she had already passed. They let my son and me go see her and I could see the imprint of the paddles on her heart — that tore me to shreds,” Santangelo said, holding back tears.
Police retrieved photos of Adame’s tattoos from the stolen phone via iCloud. After a two-month investigation, Adame was arrested and charged with Cindyana’s murder.
“I mean, she was just so full of life and energy, and it’s just, it’s really strange not to have her here,” said Cindyana’s best friend Monique Alexander.
The trial revealed that Adame had previously killed someone performing the same procedure. She was on probation from an involuntary manslaughter case for the fatal 2019 buttocks injections that killed 26-year-old Karissa Rajpaul in Sherman Oaks, California.
Adame was convicted in October 2025 of second-degree murder and practicing medicine without a license in connection with Cindyana’s death. She was sentenced to 14 years to life in prison.
Santangelo’s attorney, David Olan, confirmed that a civil suit against Adame is in progress.
Santangelo warns everyone to verify the credentials of anyone performing risky cosmetic procedures:
“You should never have anybody who’s not a medical practitioner to give you any kind of shot in the buttocks. It’s the most dangerous beauty procedure there is.”
