National Post Sports

She inspired a novel and a movie starring Robert Redford when in 1949 she lured a major league ballplayer she’d never met into a hotel room with a cryptic note and shot him, nearly killing him.

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 a half century later, when news broke that she had died three months earlier.

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. (Photo: AP/Files)

(Source: sports.nationalpost.com)