Why is the Belle Fourche, South Dakota area so murdery, by episodes?

Belle Fourche ranks 56 overall and first in South Dakota, with three murders to its name and a population the hosts put at 5,561. The name is French for beautiful fork, given for the meeting of the Belle Fourche and Red Water rivers and Hay Creek. Beaver trappers worked those rivers, then the 1876 gold rush brought farmers and ranchers into the valleys to grow food and meat for the miners. The town was founded as a place to load cattle onto freight cars for packing plants in the Midwest, a settlement built around moving things along.

The Belle Fourche area stretches to Spearfish, 12 miles out, and Whitewood, 18 miles out. Three episodes, three murders, three towns, one victim each: Whitewood in early April 1991 (episode 386), Spearfish on 12 March 2000 (episode 453), Belle Fourche in July 2004 (episode 596). No single bad night carries the count. Three separate stories across thirteen years, each one death, spread across the map the way those towns are.

The state's top hotspot is a cattle railhead and its two neighbours, not a city with a dark reputation. Nothing here looks like a murder capital.