Why is Carr, Colorado so murdery?

Carr is a railroad town of 560 people on the Colorado prairie near the Wyoming border, north-east of Denver, and it holds Colorado's only place in the league: nine murders, all from a single episode. That is the entire tally, with nothing in the surrounding twenty-five miles to add to it. Not a murder belt, then, but one very bad story in a very small place.

Episode 242 supplies the lot. The killings are dated across four points between August 1971 and June 1972, so the count comes from one episode with nine victims rather than nine episodes spread over decades. The family at the centre came from Texas; the men worked as ranch hands, carnies and fry cooks around the south-west while the women waited tables and worked the carnivals, wages topped up with robberies. One man survived a .32 calibre bullet.

It is worth saying that this ranks the show's cases, not Colorado crime. James and Jimmie go where the stories are, and a town of 560 can lead a state by hosting one of them.