Why is the Pewaukee, Wisconsin area so murdery, by episodes?

Pewaukee sits just west of Milwaukee in Waukesha County, a village approved around 1840 that grew as a farming community and did not become a city until 1999. Pewaukee Lake, a clear spring lake, was harvested for ice, and the ice houses, some of them owned by a meat company, made ice one of the town's major industries. It now holds 15,589 people, with Oconomowoc, Raymond and Grafton each about half an hour from Milwaukee.

The Pewaukee area's four episodes carry six murders between them, and no single episode does the lifting. Two of them claim two victims apiece, two claim one. Episode 571 is the nearest, a 2018 case in Pewaukee itself. Episode 344 reaches back to 1979 and 1982 in Oconomowoc, episode 259 to 1986 and 1990 in the farmland around Raymond, episode 222 to a January morning in 1982 in Grafton.

The result is the top hotspot in Wisconsin and twenty-ninth overall, built the slow way: a case at a time, from 1979 to 2018, across four towns within half an hour of the same city.