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Introduction

Small towns. We imagine peaceful, close-knit hamlets untainted by the dangers of the big city. We conjure up postcard images of picturesque town squares, parades down Main Street, bake sales, church socials. Words such as safe, friendly, and wholesome come to mind. Life is unhurried in small towns. Everyone has time to stop and chat. There’s a strong sense of community, a sense of trust. These are places where people look out for each other. Small towns symbolize the values of the past, the “good old days” when neighbor helped neighbor and people and property were treated with respect, and no one had to worry about locking doors.

Unlike the anonymity of big-city life, everyone knows each other in a small town. People’s lives are open books: their histories, tragedies, scandals, and joys known to all. In the words of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): “The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don’t know what you’re doing, someone else does.” Indeed, it’s hard to keep a secret when everyone knows your business, though some do, especially secrets of a darker variety.

Because sometimes the postcard image is tarnished by a dirty fingerprint.

Small towns might give the impression of being safe, but are they really? According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some towns in the USA with lower populations have a higher violent crime rate than large urban areas such as Detroit, Michigan. In fact, violent crime is actually on the increase in some smaller American rural communities, even rising above the national average. Statistics Canada has also reported similar findings. And it appears that these statistics aren’t exclusive to North America either; small towns in other countries have shown similar patterns as well. So, is the small-town ideal simply a myth?

The sad fact is, criminality can be found wherever human beings can be found. Be it spree killings, drug violence, sexual assault, vigilante justice, juvenile delinquency, property crime, robbery, or murder, bad things can and do happen in small towns all over the world—and they have for generations. No place is immune.

The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns brings together all-new accounts of true crime from around the globe and from various time frames. The international group of writers in this anthology have scraped off the small-town veneer to get to the real story behind the idealized postcard image. In this book, we learn about the crimes and the individuals who commit them. But we also learn about the impact these crimes have had on their communities, often leaving behind an unwanted legacy that, even with the passage of time, is still in place today.

I invite you to immerse yourself in this second volume in my true crime series. I’m sure you will come away from the experience with some fresh insight into the stories behind the headlines, as well as discover true crime cases you might never even have heard about. My contributors and I have worked together to make this book a worthwhile successor to The Best New True Crime Stories: Serial Killers. I look forward to continuing the series and providing true crime readers with the best original content the genre has to offer!

Mitzi Szereto