What made Watts particularly difficult to stop was the combination of his mobility across states, his lack of a consistent method, and the limited forensic tools available to investigators in the 1970s — factors that allowed him to operate for nearly a decade before his arrest. The true scope of his crimes remains unresolved, with official confessions accounting for only a fraction of what law enforcement suspects, making the final count a subject of ongoing uncertainty.

Debono built a commercial empire along the White Nile through the ivory trade, employing hundreds of men and becoming one of the first Europeans to chart the Sobat River and the reaches beyond Gondokoro — genuine geographic contributions that ran alongside serious accusations of complicity in the slave trade. Samuel Baker's damning assessment of his men's conduct in the region, combined with the Khartoum consul's formal charges, suggests that his exploratory reach depended heavily on methods that devastated the communities he passed through. Though the charges were ultimately dropped, the weight of contemporary testimony kept his legacy from settling cleanly on either side of the ledger.