Over four years in Salt Lake City, Bishop preyed on young boys in a pattern prosecutors described as deliberate and methodical, ultimately killing five children to conceal his crimes against them. His capture came not through physical evidence but through his own disclosure — he led investigators to the burial sites himself after being questioned. He waived his right to appeal and was executed in 1988, four years after his conviction.

His position as a railway worker gave him intimate knowledge of the S-Bahn system and, crucially, the trust of those around him — advantages he used methodically over roughly two years of attacks. The wartime blackouts that shaped daily life in Berlin also provided the conditions he depended on, obscuring his movements and isolating his victims. The women he targeted were already contending with the upheaval of wartime: traveling alone out of necessity, their husbands absent on the front.

Over three days in July 2001, Sampson killed three people who had no connection to him — two of whom had stopped to give him a ride. The crimes were marked by their opportunism and speed, unfolding across two states before his capture, and resulted in one of the rare federal death sentences handed down in Massachusetts.

What distinguished West's crimes was their sustained, domestic nature — violence embedded within an ordinary household over two decades, directed almost exclusively at girls and young women. His partnership with Rose West enabled a pattern of sexual violence that only became visible when investigators began excavating the property on Cromwell Street in 1994. He died before trial, leaving the full scope of his individual culpability partially unresolved.