I had a professor whose hobby was researching witch killings. He said most of them were in Germany (16th-17th centuries) and had trials associated with them. He thought the great motivator was that the women (majority were elderly women) were widows who owned property. Whether they were obviously not witches doesn’t really matter if there was an accusation which could be brought to trial.
Since the accusation was BS, it was just murder. Even the blitering a-hole Cotton Mather came to regret his condemnation of the murders of those accused of witchcraft in Salem et al — many years later. None of the false accusations ever resulted in punishment for the perjurers, afaik. Sounds like the events of the past five years.