Why is the Grafton, Vermont area so murdery, by murders?

Grafton has been shrinking politely for 160 years. It had about 1,500 people before the Civil War, when sheep and wool mills along the rivers and a soapstone quarry near Bear Mountain kept it busy. On paper it is a quiet town: 587 people in 2025, an inn trading since 1801, and a median household income of $68,125, about the national average.

Four episodes, numbered 642, 408, 546 and 443, cover the Grafton area's five murders between 1992 and 2005, which works out at one case every few years. Two belong to Grafton itself, in June 2002, when two people from poorer towns nearby were found in a state forest a few miles from the village. The other three sit at nine, thirteen and twenty-two miles: Townshend in 2004, Newfane in 1992 after a Memorial Day party that drew about thirty people, and Lempster in 2005. Each claimed one victim.

The count comes from four small towns spread across twenty-two miles, revisited over thirteen years. Only one hotspot in Vermont ranks higher.