Puca rose through the Nuova Camorra Organizzata from its earliest days in Poggioreale prison to become the organization's second-in-command under Raffaele Cutolo, one of the most powerful Camorra figures of the era. His career encompassed suspected murders, extortion, and the kind of institutional entanglement illustrated by the Tortora affair — a case in which a misread name in his agenda contributed to the wrongful imprisonment of a prominent television host. He was tried in the 1983 maxi-trials against the NCO and was eventually killed in a shootout in Sant'Antimo at thirty-three.

Few figures illustrate the murky overlap between state power and political violence as concretely as Çatlı, who moved between ultranationalist street militancy and covert government work with apparent official sanction. His death in a 1996 car crash — alongside a senior police official and a member of parliament — produced the scandal known as the Susurluk affair, which exposed the depth of Turkey's "deep state" connections and forced a rare public reckoning with how far those networks extended.

What distinguished Pándy from many violent offenders was the sustained domestic concealment of his crimes — killings spread across four years, within his own family, in a household where he held religious authority. His victims included multiple former partners and children, and the investigation that eventually unraveled the case required cross-border cooperation between Belgian and Hungarian police years after the disappearances began. The discovery of additional unidentified remains in one of his properties suggests the full scope of his actions may never be precisely known.

His thirteen-month campaign of random shootings across New York City's outer boroughs generated a level of public terror disproportionate to his six victims — sustained in part by taunting letters he sent to police and a tabloid press that amplified his chosen alias into something close to mythology. The "Son of Sam" case reshaped how American cities, police departments, and media institutions handle serial crime investigations, and New York State eventually passed legislation — "Son of Sam laws" — restricting convicted criminals from profiting off their own stories. His later admission that the demonic-dog explanation was fabricated left open the question of what, if any, coherent motive had driven the attacks.