His crimes unfolded over a single summer in Magnitogorsk, targeting young girls in a city where he was, by outward measure, an unremarkable family man and university student. The case generated unusual public fury, with crowds demanding execution — a response that reflected both the brutality of the killings and the shock of the perpetrator's ordinary profile. His eventual capture came not through investigative breakthrough but through circumstance: a dropped hat and glasses on a night of severe cold. Decades of subsequent legal maneuvering, combined with a persistent refusal to admit guilt, have kept him in the public record long after the crimes themselves.

The Hoddle Street massacre unfolded over roughly half an hour on a Sunday evening, leaving seven dead and nineteen wounded along a stretch of suburban Melbourne road — a scale of violence that had no precedent in modern Australian history at the time. Knight was nineteen years old and had recently been dismissed from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, weeks before the attack. The case eventually prompted the Victorian government to pass legislation specifically preventing his release, a measure he challenged unsuccessfully all the way to the High Court.

Garrow operated across upstate New York in the early 1970s, leaving a trail of sexual violence and murder before his capture following a manhunt in the Adirondacks. His case became as notable for its legal aftermath as for his crimes — his attorneys' knowledge of undisclosed victim remains, kept confidential under attorney-client privilege, sparked a lasting national debate about the ethical limits of legal representation. The question of additional victims, including a suspected cross-border killing in Canada, was never fully resolved.