Why is Coushatta, Louisiana so murdery?

Coushatta is a small town in Red River Parish, one of the smallest parishes in Louisiana, with a population the hosts put at 2,217 in 2024. It is named for the tribe who lived there before settlers forced them out, and pretty much known for one thing: the Coushatta massacre, which came after the Civil War, during Reconstruction, when the Klan was forming.

The league count is lopsided. All nine murders within 25 miles fall inside the town itself, and all nine arrive in a single episode, 459, across cases dated between 1980 and 1991. Other towns build a count from many episodes; this one rests on one. Hence rank 138 overall and first in Louisiana.

That episode opens on a family history rather than a map reference: a father who was a deputy sheriff, a janitor and a dairy farmer, a brother who became a state trooper, a grim childhood, a grandfather down a well on New Year's Eve 1961, an aunt stabbed to death two years later. One story, told at length, counted nine times. The show picks the towns; this is not a crime rate.