Straffen's case occupies a particular place in English criminal history less for its scale than for its circumstances — a man found unfit to stand trial who nonetheless killed again during a four-hour escape from a secure psychiatric facility, demonstrating how severely the system had underestimated his capacity for harm. His stated motive for the first two killings — to "annoy" the police — was as disquieting to contemporaries as the acts themselves, suggesting neither rage nor compulsion in the conventional sense. He would go on to serve one of the longest prison sentences in British history.

What brought Winters to lasting notoriety was not a single act of violence but a pattern that investigators came to view as far exceeding it — the death of her infant son in 1980 was the charge that secured a conviction, but the suspicion of additional victims placed her among a distinct and troubling category of domestic killers whose crimes unfold invisibly within the home. The combination of murder, arson, and suspected serial conduct across a contained private sphere made her case a sobering example of harm that evades detection for years.

The murders of two young boys in central Italy in the early 1990s set off a wave of public hysteria that saw false confessions, wrongful suspicion, and at least one suicide before Chiatti was identified — largely because the second victim's body was found near his own home. Courts ultimately found him to have been partially mentally incapacitated at the time of the crimes, a determination that reduced his sentence significantly and has kept him under psychiatric supervision well beyond his formal release. The case drew attention not only for the crimes themselves but for the way the surrounding frenzy distorted the investigation and damaged lives far beyond its immediate victims.

His position as a nurse gave him both access and cover — seven patients died by lethal injection across a span of seven months before the pattern was recognized. The hospital setting placed him among the most vulnerable people imaginable, and the killings unfolded quietly within an institution built around care.