Editing Ruth Ann Steinhagen (section)

===Aftermath and later life===
Steinhagen was arrested and then arraigned on June 30, 1949. Questioned about the shooting, she told police she did not know why she had done it, telling an assistant state's attorney that she wanted "to do something exciting in my life."

Taken to Waitkus' hospital room the day after the shooting, she told him, as well, that she didn't know for sure why she had done it. She told a psychiatrist before she went to court that "I didn't want to be nervous all my life", and explained to reporters that "the tension had been building up within me, and I thought killing someone would relieve it"— a murderous impulse that had been with her for at least two years. She said she had first seen Waitkus three years before, and that he reminded her "of everybody, especially my father."

Steinhagen's counsel presented a petition to the court saying that their client was "unable to cooperate with counsel in the defense of her cause" and did not "understand the nature of the charge against her." The petition requested a sanity hearing. At the ensuing sanity hearing (which also occurred on June 30, 1949), Dr. William Haines, a court-appointed psychiatrist, testified that Steinhagen had "schizophrenia in an immature individual" and was mentally ill.

Steinhagen was confined and treated at the institution until 1952, when she was declared cured and released. Waitkus did not press charges against Steinhagen after she was released, telling an assistant state's attorney that he wanted to forget the incident.

After her release, Steinhagen moved back home to live with her parents and her younger sister in her parents' small apartment on Chicago's North Side. She shunned publicity in the ensuing decades. Little information is publicly available about the remainder of her life, which was quiet and secluded. She steadfastly maintained her privacy, avoided reporters, and refused to comment publicly on her shooting of Waitkus.

On December 29, 2012, Steinhagen died in a Chicago hospital of a subdural hematoma that was the result of an accidental fall in her home. Her death was not publicly reported until nearly three months after it occurred; the Chicago Tribune learned of it while searching death records in connection with another story. Steinhagen was 83 years old, and left no immediate survivors.

[[Category:Modern Villains]]
[[Category:Deceased]]
[[Category:Attempted Murderer]]
[[Category:Criminals]]
[[Category:Obsessed]]
[[Category:Stalker]]
[[Category:Female]]
[[Category:Mentally Ill]]
[[Category:Femme Fatale]]
[[Category:Delusional]]
[[Category:Suicidal]]
[[Category:Psychopath]]
[[Category:Homicidal]]
[[Category:Wrathful]]
[[Category:Envious Villains]]
[[Category:Imprisoned]]
[[Category:European Villains]]
[[Category:Germany]]
[[Category:Assassins]]