Why is Fletcher, Vermont so murdery?

Fletcher is a small town in Franklin County in Vermont's north-west corner, close enough to Canada that the hosts opened by pointing north. It sits at the centre of a cluster of six towns the show has visited within 25 miles: St Albans at 11, Enosburgh and Essex at 14, Stowe at 20, Richmond at 22. That is a scatter across the state's north rather than a ring around one city, farm and ski country with Burlington half an hour from Richmond.

The nine murders spread across four decades, from 1973 and 1974 through 1976, 1980, 1985, 1986, 1991 and 1996 to 2013, so no single bad year carries the count. Nor does a single case: episode 355 accounts for two, episodes 598 and 463 for two each, and the rest one apiece.

Two of the nine happened in Fletcher itself. The hosts also noted the town's first recorded murder, a dispute between two farmers over adjoining land in 1855, and its habit of escaping epidemics. It is worth saying plainly that this is a count of the show's cases, not of crime. The show picks the towns.