Why is Citronelle, Alabama so murdery?

Citronelle sits in southwestern Alabama, forty minutes outside Mobile, a town of 3,940 in Mobile County. As the hosts tell it, this was French country first, named for the citronella plant, then a resort town built on mineral springs and healing waters. The cases within 25 miles fan out from there either side of the state line: Chunchula twelve miles away, Lucedale over in Mississippi at twenty-three.

The nineteen murders arrive in only three episodes, and they are not spread evenly. Episode 447 accounts for thirteen on its own, its dates running from 1992 to 2004, which makes it less one bad night than a long grim thread. Episode 500 carries five, dated 2016. Episode 215 adds a single case from 2004.

It is worth being honest about the arithmetic. This counts the show's cases, not local crime statistics, and the show picks the towns. Citronelle's rank says more about where James and Jimmie have pointed the microphone than about the dangers of taking the waters.