After the headlines faded, Ruth Ann Steinhagen did something else
just as surprising: She disappeared into obscurity, living a quiet life
unnoticed in Chicago until now, more than half a century later, when
news broke that she had died three months earlier.
The Cook County
Medical Examiner's Office confirmed on Friday that Steinhagen passed
away of natural causes on December 29, at the age of 83. First reported
by the Chicago Tribune last week, her identity was a surprise even to
the morgue employees who knew about the 1984 movie, The Natural, in
which she was portrayed by actress Barbara Hershey.
"She chose to
live in the shadows and she did a good job of it," John Theodore, an
author who wrote a 2002 non-fiction book about the crime, wrote in an
email on Sunday.
The story, with its elements of obsession, mystery, insanity and a
baseball star, made it part of both Chicago's colourful crime history
and rich baseball lore.
The story began with what appeared to be
just another young woman's crush on Eddie Waitkus, the Chicago Cubs'
handsome first baseman. So complete was this crush that the teenager set
a place for Waitkus, whom she'd never met, at the family dinner table.
She turned her bedroom into a shrine to him, and put his photo under her
pillow.
After the 1948 season, Waitkus was traded to the
Philadelphia Phillies - a fateful turn. "When he went to the Phillies,
that's when she decided to kill him," Theodore said in an interview.
Newspapers
devoured and trumpeted the lurid story of a 19-year-old baseball
groupie, known in the parlance of the day as a "Baseball Annie". Among
the sensational and probably staged photos was one showing Steinhagen
writing in her journal at a table in her jail cell with a framed
photograph of Waitkus propped nearby.
No comments:
Post a Comment