Deuteronomy 21:4

and the elders of that city, not merely because some citizen of their town would be suspected of the crime, but because blood-guiltiness was upon Israel generally, and therefore especially upon the places in the neighborhood of the murder, shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley, a rocky gorge with a perennial stream, which is neither eared nor sown, where some barren strip was useless for agricultural purposes, and strike off the heifer's neck there in the valley, break her neck in symbolical representation of the punishment which should hare struck the murderer;