Barbara Hershey in A Killing in a Small Town (1990)

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Being a murderer in a tiny village where all the inhabitants know one another is a riskier venture than knocking off some annoying and anonymous character in a big city. If you live within a tightly drawn municipal boundary, you know it's hard to keep your name off the list of suspects any time there is A Killing in a Small Town (1990). In this made-for-TV movie, extrapolated from an actual 1980 Texas ax murder, no one is safe from suspicion, not even that soft-spoken neighbor lady with the husband and the kid. Sakes alive, but wasn't she the victim's best friend? Shock one is that a mild-mannered mother could actually chop her closest confidante into a stack of dead pieces. Shock two is that the perpetrator can still claim she is innocent, even though acknowledging she is the woman who picked up the ax.