Why is the Amherst, Virginia area so murdery, by episodes?

Amherst sits in the dead centre of Virginia, twenty five miles southeast of Lexington and forty four miles from Charlottesville: a town of 2,210 people in a county that got its start growing tobacco, with trading posts before that and a founding date of 1807. The introduction is a straight line through local history, from Native Americans hunting and fishing to the Virginia colony and on to the tobacco fields.

The Amherst area claimed two episodes and six murders, and the spread is narrow. Both cases fall in the mid 1980s, one in March 1985 and one in September 1987. The second town in the hotspot is Lynchburg, fifteen miles down the road, so the whole geography is two towns fifteen miles apart in the middle of the state.

Episode 57 carries most of the weight, with four victims in Amherst itself. Episode 649 adds two from Lynchburg. Two episodes, six deaths, rank 69 overall and first in Virginia: a quiet county with one very bad decade.