Why is the Belmont, New Hampshire area so murdery, by episodes?

Belmont sits in the middle of New Hampshire, half an hour from Concord and two hours from Boston, a mill town chartered in 1727 and once known as Upper Gilmanton, where water power from the Tioga River drove a cotton and woollen works. The Belmont area reaches north to Plymouth, twenty-three miles away: a college town of 6,916 people spread over twenty-eight square miles of woods, its motto promising a bridge between the lakes region and the white mountains. One town that made cloth, one that turns out graduates.

The cases do not spread evenly. Episode 97 stays in Belmont and covers a single September in 2006, two victims, among them a twenty-six-year-old woman who worked in a retirement home, in a case the court reporting tied to methamphetamine. Episode 254 goes back further and further out, four victims across 1989, 1991, 1992 and 1994 in Plymouth.

So one episode with four victims carries most of the count, and a later two-victim case in the centre town supplies the rest. Seventy-first overall and second in New Hampshire: a short list, doing quiet work.