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

Cedar City sits in Iron County in southern Utah, about 250 miles south of Salt Lake City: a town of roughly 36,000 with some 7,000 students at the university. It began in 1851, when about thirty-five men arrived to build an iron works on the north bank of Coal Creek. The works were dead by the late 1850s, the town turned agricultural, and the iron mining rumbled on through the Second World War before fading in the 1980s.

The Cedar City area's five murders come from only two episodes, and no single one carries the count. Episode 256, set in the town in July 1998, accounts for two. Episode 303, three victims, belongs to Paragonah, 23 miles out, and reaches back to August 1976 and April 1977.

Two cases a generation apart, one in the town and one 23 miles out, with long quiet stretches either side. Rank 78 overall and second in Utah is a modest sort of notoriety.