Why is Baileyton, Tennessee so murdery, by murders?

Baileyton is a town of about 430 people in Greene County, in the north-eastern panhandle of Tennessee, an hour from Knoxville. It was first settled as Laurel Gap in 1776, became Bailey Town, two words, for two Bailey brothers who lived there, and lost the w in 1915 to become Baileyton. The name has had more revisions than most towns get.

Its murder count is a single terrible April. All four murders in the hotspot come from one episode, episode 478, and all of them happened in April 1997, when six young people from eastern Kentucky made Baileyton a stopover on the way to New Orleans. There is no spread across the decades and no pile of separate cases adding up: one episode carries the lot, 0 miles from the centre, in the town itself.

For a place this size that is a heavy thing to hold, and it puts Baileyton second in Tennessee and 106th overall.