As Royal Prussian executioner for nearly fourteen years, Schwietz occupied one of the most singular offices in the imperial German justice system — a state-sanctioned role defined entirely by the infliction of death. His tenure of over 120 executions, carried out primarily by axe across the Prussian provinces, reflects the legal and institutional machinery through which capital punishment was administered in this era.

Among the most consequential loose ends in modern Spanish criminal history, Anglés has never been apprehended for his alleged role in one of the country's most disturbing cases — the abduction and killing of three teenage girls in 1992. His disappearance before he could be tried, and the unconfirmed sightings that followed across multiple countries, have left the case unresolved for over three decades. The absence of a final accounting has made him a persistent subject of investigative attention and public memory in Spain.

What distinguished this English mystic was not merely the deception involved but its scope and duration — a years-long accumulation of wealth, land, and human loyalty built on spiritual authority he had largely invented. The community he established on Vancouver Island drew educated, propertied followers who surrendered significant fortunes to his cause, and the control he eventually exercised over them extended to forced labor and imprisonment. When legal accountability finally approached, he destroyed the colony rather than face it and fled the country with what his former disciples believed was their gold.