Herald and news., February 21, 1960, Page 26, Image 26

Family Weekly February 21, I960
From psychiatrists' files
The girl who
comes a case unrivaled by the most imaginative fiction:
By CURTIS MITCHELL
Eddie waitkus had no business going to the girl's
room alone that midnight in June, 1949, but
there was the urgent and mysterious note he had
found on his dresser: "It's important that I see you
as soon as possible ... I think it would be to your
advantage to let me explain it to you."
He took an elevator to the 12th floor and walked
hesitantly to Room 1297A. He knocked and heard
footsteps. When the door opened, he saw that she
was tall, slim, and very pale. Her eyes, as he stepped
past her into the room, flashed with annoyance.
"I've got a surprise for you," she said, striding
toward the closet. Then she turned swiftly, pointing
a .22 rifle at him, and said, "For two years, you've
been bothering me, and now you're going to die."
It's a joke, he thought. Maybe the fellows are pull
ing a rib. He said, "What goes on here?"
The bullet hit his chest, tore through the right
lung, and lodged near the spine. He fell, crying,
"Baby, what did you do that for?"
Hours later, the American baseball public was
asking the same question, and so were two psy
chiatrists in the Behavior Clinic of the Criminal
Court of Cook County, 111., Dr. William H. Haines,
director, and Dr. Robert A. Esser, his assistant.
To them, Ruth Steinhagen, 19-year-old typist for
a Chicago firm, tried to explain her attack:
"I'm sorry Eddie has to suffer so, but I had to
shoot somebody. He reminded me of my father.
Since I shot Eddie, I feel more consoled and relieved
than ever before in my life."
Her answer led to another query: was Ruth sane
or insane? Could she be tried under Illinois law?
Psychiatrists Haines and Esser, public servants as
well as physicians, had to find out. They began to
question her in the gloomy Cook County jail. Con
ditions were hardly the best. Chicago newspapers
made a field day of the event, filling their pages with
her pictures. "I've never been so happy in my life,"
she announced.
Meanwhile, Eddie Waitkus had to endure two
operations to remove the bullet from his lung. He
shot the ballplayer
the true story of the twisted teen-ager who tried to kill her baseball "idol
snapped, "She seems to think this is a joke. She
should be taken off the streets, same as a mad dog."
Ignoring the uproar, doctors gave her standard
psychological tests. Her IQ was normal. But her
attention span was so brief that it was necessary to
call her back over and over to the tests. A device
called the Rorschach test indicated that her per
sonality was in danger of splitting off from reality
to such a degree that she would become, in effect,
two persons in one body. To the doctors, there was
strong evidence of schizophrenia a common form
of mental illness.
That did not necessarily mean, however, that she
was legally insane when she tried to kill Eddie. No
test could answer that; only the insight of a psy
chiatrist could.
Investigators sought out friends and members of
her family, seeking any clue to the jigsaw puzzle of
Ruth's mind. Her parents had come from Berlin to
New York, where they married when both were 22.
They moved to Chicago, and Ruth was born a year
later.
Of her father, Ruth said: "He was nice and stub
born. I am stubborn, too, and that is why we don't
get along. He said things about Eddie I didn't
like. I used to get real mad and go to my room and
beat my hands on the bed. He said girls nowadays
must be crazy using lipstick, nail polish, going after
ballplayers, and dancing to jive."
As an adolescent, she refused to allow a male
i physician to examine her. After much persua
sion, she accepted a woman doctor who noted that,
even at 16, she was underdeveloped physically.
-Ruth was bright in school and once was given a
double promotion. Because she preferred to remain
with her own class, she resented this. She was grad
uated at 13, went on through two years of high
school, then two years of commercial college. On
graduation, the college offered to place her, but she
insisted on getting her first job herself. About this
time she became fearful of meeting people.
Yet employers and her associates at work liked
her. Her few close friends thought highly of her, too.
How did her infatuation for Waitkus start? A
friend said she had gone to a ball game and noticed
Eddie for the first time when some kid called to
him, "Hello, funny-face." From then on, he was
her dream boat.
She began to collect pictures and clippings of
Waitkus. Soon, he filled all her thoughts. At home,
all table talk had to be about Eddie.
Her feverish interest mounted day after day.
Eddie's baseball uniform bore the number 36. That
number haunted her. "I used to see 36s every
where," she said. She even bought phonograph rec
ords issued only in 1936.
Waitkus became an obsession, a dangerous one.
"I used to go to all the ball games I could and just
watch him," she told Dr. Haines. "I used to wait
for him to come out of the clubhouse after the
games, and all the time I was forming the idea of
killing him. I knew I couldn't get him in the normal
way, so I kept thinking, 'If I can't have him, nobody
will.' Then I decided to kill him. I didn't know how
or when."
To Dr. Haines, the broad, cheerless strokes of
incipient schizophrenia were obvious. He knew that
many teen-agers had loved in vain, been rejected,
and yet managed to survive.
Ruth even left home and went to live in a fur
nished room. But she continued to eat her evening
meal with her parents. Her visits home were dis
turbing to her. The sight of men, even her father,
continued to remind her of Eddie.
Often she talked with Eddie much too often. His
picture was in her billfold by day and under her
pillow by night. They went for long walks together,
or so she pretended.
And she dreamed. Ruth said: "I never dreamed
of killing anyone except Eddie. I had the idea of
shooting him. I was sitting with him in my arms."
Was that the birth of her crime?
Unsuspected by anyone, a plan was forming. One
day she picked up a paper in search of news about
Eddie and there he was, speaking to her.
"He was holding a gun," she told the doctor.
"Well, I thought the whole thing was pretty sig
nificant of what I was going to do. Then I decided
to kill him with a gun. It would be the easiest way.
He as much as told me to ... in that picture."
Ruth told Dr. Haines: "I actually got the gun in
May. I went to a pawnshop and I got this second
hand rifle. A girl friend was with me and we went
over to my house and hid it."
Her next steps were as coolly calculated as a
bank robbery. "I looked up the schedule to see
when the Phillies would be here. I put in my res
ervation (at the Edgewater Beach Hotel where
the Philadelphia team stayed) for that time. While
waiting, I learned how to put the rifle together and
take it apart."
At the last minute, she hinted broadly of her
plan. "Tomorrow night, you'll have all kinds of
exciting things to talk about," she promised a friend.
Then she drew all her money out of the bank. That
afternoon, Eddie got a hit as Philadelphia won, 9
to 2. Ruth watched him from the stands and was
happy. At the end of the game, she took a taxi to
the hotel. She had registered earlier. Her rifle was
in the closet.
She showed no reticence in reciting the damn
ing facts. "I ordered a radio from room service and
some drinks. Then I sent for the bellboy and gave
him $5 and told him it was important to give him
(Eddie) the note. The boy called up that Waitkus
wasn't there, but he left the note on the dresser. I
sat down and listened to the radio. That was about
6:30. At about 10:30, I finished the drinks."
Weary of waiting, Ruth went to sleep easily.
Meanwhile, Waitkus had returned to his room,
found her note, and was thinking it over. A silly
doll note; what could she want?
"The telephone was ringing," Ruth recalled later.
"He wanted to know what the note was about
He said, 'What's so darned important?' and that
shocked me. I said, 'Can you come up for a few
minutes?' He said yes, so I got dressed and waited."
Ruth's words were a torrent now. "When he
opened the door, he came rushing in right past
me. I expected him to stand there and wait until
I asked him to come in, and during that time I was
going to stab him with a knife. I was kind of mad
that he came in and sat down and didn't give me
a chance .to stab him."
There it was, the twisted logic of the mentally
ill. But was it legal insanity? She said: "I went
to the closet and got out the gun. I pointed it at him,
and he had such a silly look. I was pretty mad at
him, so I told him to move over by the window. He
got up right away and said, 'Baby, What's this all
about?' That made me mad. I said, 'For two years
you've been bothering me, and now you're going
to die.' And then I shot him.
"For a minute, I didn't think I shot him because
he just stood there. Then he crashed against the
wall. He kept saying, 'Baby, why did you do that?'
He was still smiling.
"I knelt down next to him. He had his hand
stretched out and I put my hand over his. ... I asked,
'Where have you been shot?' I couldn't see a bul
let hole or blood or anything. He said I shot him
(Continued on page 15)
Family Weekly, February 21, 1960