Why is Dickinson, North Dakota so murdery, by episodes?

Dickinson is oil country. The town has 23,527 people, and the motels on the main drag let rooms by the week or the month to men working the fields. It is also the whole hotspot: one town, one episode.

The three murders come from episode 305, across two cases seven years apart, November 1981 and June 1988. The earlier one centred on a woman of 52 who had raised nine children, two sons and seven daughters, before moving into the manager's quarters of an old single-storey motel to run it. She looked after a seven-year-old granddaughter there.

That puts Dickinson third in North Dakota and 192nd overall.