Why is Bismarck, North Dakota so murdery?

Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota, set in the south of the state on the Missouri River, where explorers once came upriver as far as boats would take them and a Mandan settlement stood before the railway towns arrived. The Northern Pacific called the place Edwinton for a while, then renamed it in 1873 for a German chancellor, and the population was given as 73,321 in 2023. On the league it is 157 overall and first in North Dakota, a title it holds largely by default.

The eight murders come from just two episodes, and one carries most of them. Episode 412 stays in town, with two victims in 1998. Episode 543 goes 11 miles out to Menoken, a settlement of about 72 people on the old Interstate 94, some 20 minutes from the capital, and supplies six victims across cases dated 1978 and 1992. Three quarters of the tally, then, sits in one very small place.

Which is the honest way to read it: this counts the show's cases, not the state's crime. James and Jimmie pick the towns, and a place with one bad episode can outrank a city ten times its size.