Why is Otisco, New York so murdery, by murders?

Otisco is a small town in Onondaga County, 2,557 people at the 2017 telling, and a town only since 1806, when it was stitched together from parts of three neighbours. Before that it was soldier country, part of the two million acre Military Tract set aside to pay Revolutionary War veterans, who were promised 100 acres each before Congress raised it to 500. Settlers without a war record turned up around 1798 anyway.

Every murder this hotspot claims comes from one episode, episode 8, and the four deaths fall between 1979 and 2008. Nearly thirty years is a long span for a single case, and the hosts had to take it a decade at a time. The episode opens in a household where a father worked nights and a mother was home, and with a four year old persuaded to swap places so another child could stay at their grandmother's.

Otisco has two and a half thousand people and ranks 127 overall, third in New York.