His case is notable less for the crimes alone than for the successive failures of psychiatric oversight that preceded them — a pattern of release, deterioration, and harm that an inquest later confirmed was enabled by inadequate monitoring and assessment. Three people died across a span of eleven years, the last two while Bryan was under institutional care. The court record, and the judge's own words at sentencing, document the nature of the final attacks with particular gravity.

Over 23 years and 203 executions, Ellis occupied one of the most quietly consequential positions in the British criminal justice system — the man who carried out the state's final authority. His subjects included some of the most discussed criminal cases of the Edwardian era, from Dr. Crippen to Roger Casement, and his record reflects the full breadth of what capital punishment meant in practice during that period. The psychological cost appears to have been cumulative, surfacing most visibly after the hanging of Edith Thompson and ultimately proving insurmountable.

The ward entrusted with the care of critically ill children became the setting for a sustained series of attacks carried out by one of its own nurses. The harm was inflicted covertly, using methods — including insulin overdoses and, in at least one case, an air bubble — that initially defied detection, and the crimes continued for nearly three months before suspicion fell on a member of staff.

What makes Pruett particularly notable is the institutional dimension of his case: the federal government placed him in witness protection based on testimony he later admitted was false, and his subsequent killing spree unfolded under a government-issued alias. Within roughly two years of entering the program, he had killed at least five people across four states, targeting bank employees and convenience store workers. The murders were concentrated in a narrow window in late 1981, suggesting an accelerating trajectory that ended only with his arrest.

Operating at the intersection of Atlantic commerce and West African statecraft, de Sousa built his position in Ouidah into one of the most consequential nodes of the transatlantic slave trade. His involvement extended well beyond trafficking: he helped engineer a royal coup in Dahomey and held the title of chachá, giving him lasting influence over the political and economic machinery that sustained the trade in the region. The scale of his operations earned him the designation of history's greatest slave trader, a distinction measured in the volume of human lives funneled through the port he effectively controlled.