PORTLAND — Maine recorded 20 homicides thus far in 1995, the second-lowest yearly total on record, authorities said Friday.

“The average is 25 to 30,” said Stephen McCausland of the state Department of Public Safety. “This is the second-lowest since we began keeping records in 1971.”

Maine’s bloodiest year for homicides was 1989, when 40 were recorded. The lowest total was 16, in 1993.

While records show that roughly one-third of Maine’s homicides involve domestic relationships, 10 of this year’s 20 killings fell into that category.

Among them was a triple slaying in Brownfield on Feb. 9 in which Dennis VanWart shot and killed his parents and his brother. A judge late this year rejected VanWart’s insanity defense and found him guilty of three counts of murder.

A Turner man, Lloyd F. Millett, faces charges of murdering two women he encountered in night spots in Turner and Lewiston over a three-day period in early November.

Five of this year’s homicides were murder-suicides, McCausland said, citing cases in Portland, Fairfield, Scarborough, Lewiston and Anson.

Two of this year’s homicide victims were children, both 8 months old. One of the deaths, in Bangor, remains under investigation; the other, in Springvale, resulted in the arrest of the mother in Florida, McCausland said.

The four cases that remain open include the slayings of Aisha Dickson, the baby found Jan. 7 in her Bangor home; the drug-related stabbing of Jeffrey Bradbury on March 31 in Lewiston; the shooting in Portland of William Greenwood on April 30; and the knife slaying of Alex James, a 58-year-old woman whose body was found June 17 in a Hampden industrial park.

Maine’s first homicides of 1995 occurred on Jan. 7, when there were two the same day.