Why is the East Amwell Township, New Jersey area so murdery, by episodes?

East Amwell Township is farm country in western central New Jersey, about an hour from Philadelphia and an hour and ten minutes from New York City. The 2020 count put its population at 3,933, and in August 1973 it was smaller still. Episode 1 went there for a single killing that month.

Episode 360, in 2023, went 17 miles west to Fallsington, a small town in Bucks County about forty minutes outside Philadelphia, where three people were killed in August 1980. A butcher shop there sold more than meat, and the plan was to leave no witnesses, including a pregnant woman. That one night carries three of the hotspot's four murders.

The East Amwell area is really the Philadelphia countryside: one New Jersey farm town and one Pennsylvania small town, 17 miles and a state line apart, both close enough to the city to share its orbit. Two cases, seven years apart, and two episodes, three years apart. Not a crime wave. Just a quiet corner of the map the show has visited twice.