Why is Bernardo, New Mexico so murdery, by murders?

Bernardo is a small place on old Route 66, about 50 minutes south of Albuquerque, sitting in the Albuquerque basin with the Bernardo Wildlife Management Area and its sandhill cranes as the main draw. The town was named in 1902, and it has been thinning out: nearly twice as many people lived around there 15 years ago, and they have cleared out since.

Its four murders all come from one episode, 331, across two stretches of time. One belongs to 1988 to 1990. The other is the night of 22 November 1992, when three young people from Albuquerque drank through the evening, went out to shoot rabbits in the desert and changed plan. They decided to pick up a hitchhiker and frighten him. Near the university they saw a 17-year-old walking home from an arcade. The night carried on to a pull-off in the wildlife preserve off U.S. 60, reached by leaving Interstate 25 at the Bernardo exit.

So the whole claim rests on one lonely exit and one episode, which is a modest sort of fame: an emptied-out town, a refuge full of cranes, and a case that starts with rabbits.