Affectionately known for years as “Little Red Robin Hood,” Ivana Krushya was born near Odessa, Ukraine. After a childhood of petty thievery, she was kidnapped by bandits near Dnipropetrovsk.  She joined the gang that snatched her and became the mistress of one of its leaders.  Following a death wish career as a professional hijacker, getaway driver, and incendiary device technician, she finally escaped her captors to become one of the former Soviet Union’s most notorious assassins.  For years, Krushya was wanted for countless retaliatory murders and for the revenge shooting in 1981 of more than 20 former Red henchmen who had abused and killed her brothers, Aleksandr and Sergei.  During her fugitive years, Krushya became a folk hero for the oppressed and downtrodden, as she avenged the atrocities forced upon the Soviet Union’s humble peasants.  After negotiating with the authorities, she surrendered in 1983 under heavy security and heavier media coverage.  Eventually released from prison in 1994, she shunned the overtures of the Red Mafia and emigrated to the United States, finally holing up in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood where she joined the clandestine assassination squad known as the Double Crossers.