Why is Essex, Vermont so murdery?

Essex sits in Chittenden County in northwestern Vermont, a corner that borders New York and leans towards Canada, about twenty minutes outside Burlington. It is the sort of town incorporated in 1763 and named for an English earl, the kind of detail James and Jimmie enjoy before getting to the point. The show has 8 murders within 25 miles of it, spread across 5 episodes and 5 towns, with just one in Essex itself, in episode 83.

The spread is the story. The cases run from 1973 to 2013, one here and one there rather than a cluster: a trailer on a rural plot near Fletcher, farm and ski country around Richmond, then Stowe, St. Albans and Essex. Four of the five episodes carry two victims each, the other two carry one, so no single awful afternoon inflates the total. It is many episodes adding up, which is somehow less comforting than one.

Rank 143 overall and second in Vermont, this is a count of the show's cases, not of crime in the Green Mountains. The show picks the towns. Essex simply keeps finding itself within reach of the ones it picks.