Why is the Elizabeth, West Virginia area so murdery, by episodes?

Elizabeth, West Virginia, is 819 people in a holler, a small valley between two hills with nothing much around it for a while. James says the town was named after a queen, which is a grand start for a place that size. The Elizabeth area ranks 62 overall and third in West Virginia, with nine murders across two episodes and two towns.

The arithmetic is lopsided. Episode 272 gives the hotspot one killing in Elizabeth itself, in June 1980, after a day-long quarrel turned into a running gunfight. Episode 605 gives it the other eight, sixteen miles away in Parkersburg, and those cases are scattered from the late 1970s through to 1983. So one city's run does nearly all the work.

Parkersburg is the bigger neighbour, in Wood County, an hour and fifty minutes from Columbus, Ohio, and the place Elizabeth's junk got hauled to for selling. Two towns in the same hilly corner of the northern panhandle, one running gunfight and one long cluster: that is the whole count.