Why is the Burke, Vermont area so murdery, by murders?

Burke has about 1,722 people spread over 34 square miles of Caledonia County, in the Northeast Kingdom, the state's northeast corner. Settlers arrived in 1792 and the town was organised in 1796. The original lots of roughly 160 acres went to sixty-five grantees, many of them Revolutionary War soldiers paid in land. Lumber and farming paid the bills, and from the 1950s skiing and vacation homes did too.

The Burke area's three cases are strung out along that same corner of the state: Burke itself, St. Johnsbury 13 miles off and Brownington 18 miles out. St. Johnsbury is the big neighbour at about 7,375 people, a little under its 1930 peak, and spent the last century making platform scales and maple sugar.

The three cases fall in 2000, 2009 and 2012, with one victim each and one episode apiece (42, 301 and 127). Each has its own year and its own town.