Why is Aberdeen, New South Wales so murdery?

Aberdeen is a small town in the Upper Hunter Shire, one of the first settlements in the Upper Hunter Valley, on land the Wanarua people occupied before settlement, and named after the Scottish city of the same name. About 2,000 people live there now, which in league table terms is the whole problem: a place that size has to be unusually unlucky to climb.

It has one entry, episode 620, and it happened in the town itself in March 2000. A woman in her forties who worked at the local abattoir was killed, and a judge called the case almost beyond contemplation in a civilised society. One case, one victim, one episode: there is no cluster here, no road with a body every few miles. That puts Aberdeen at 576 overall and second in New South Wales.

Worth saying plainly that this counts the show's cases, not the crime statistics. The show chooses where to go, and it went to Aberdeen once. A town of 2,000 with a single entry is not a murder capital so much as a reminder of how thin the numbers get out here.