Why is the Cedar City, Utah area so murdery, by murders?

Cedar City sits in Iron County in southern Utah, about 250 miles south of Salt Lake City. At the time of its case the population was roughly 36,000, including some 7,000 students at the university. The town began in 1851, when about thirty-five men arrived to establish an iron works on the north bank of Coal Creek. The works were dead by the late 1850s; farming took over, and iron mining carried on until the 1980s.

The five murders come in two episodes, two decades apart. Episode 256 covers a case from July 1998 in Cedar City itself, with two victims; one was a tribal substance abuse counsellor who had moved there a little over a year earlier. Episode 303 reaches back to August 1976 and April 1977 in Paragonah, 23 miles away, where three people were killed.

Cedar City supplies the recent case. Paragonah, 23 miles away in the same county, supplies the older pair: three of the five victims, over two cases a year apart. That leaves the centre with one episode and two victims to its name.