Ross rose to lead one of Canada's most powerful organized crime organizations, ultimately extending its reach into international drug trafficking on a scale that drew the attention of American federal authorities. His arrest in Florida in 1991 marked the end of a criminal career that had placed him, by law enforcement estimates, among the most significant narcotics figures operating anywhere in the world at that time.

Over a five-month period in 1996, Hidaka killed and robbed four women in Hiroshima, exploiting his position as a taxi driver to access vulnerable victims. The case drew additional attention after his execution, when his defense attorney alleged that prison authorities had unlawfully denied him access to his client — a procedural claim that raised questions separate from the crimes themselves.

A career criminal before he became a commander, Ražnatović moved from contract killings and bank robberies across Europe into organized atrocity when war created the conditions for both. The paramilitary force he led in the early 1990s became known for the speed and thoroughness with which it carried out ethnic cleansing operations in Bosnia, combining military discipline with criminal networks. His dual standing — as Serbia's dominant organized crime figure and a state-tolerated instrument of wartime violence — gave him a reach that outlasted the formal conflicts themselves.

The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968 came at a moment when the senator appeared to be on a viable path to the Democratic presidential nomination. Sirhan later stated his motive explicitly in terms of Kennedy's support for Israel, and the attack's timing — carried out on the anniversary of the Six-Day War — reflected a political grievance that was largely unfamiliar to the American public at the time. Scholars have since identified the killing as an early instance of Middle East political violence reaching onto American soil, giving the act a significance that extends beyond the loss of one candidate.