Why is the Falkner, Mississippi area so murdery, by episodes?

Falkner is a village of 514 in northern Mississippi, about an hour and twenty minutes from Memphis, grown from a depot on the Ripley railroad. The Falkner area runs out to Walnut, eight miles away and three miles short of Tennessee, and Booneville, a college town 25 miles off: three small towns across one stretch of the state's north, all within reach of Memphis.

The cases are spread through the 1980s and 1990s. Episode 588 covers a 1981 murder in Falkner itself, episode 340 a 1985 case at the college in Booneville, and episode 138 two cases in Walnut, from 1991 and 1993, with three victims between them. So no single bad night inflates the tally. Four cases over a dozen years, in towns where, as James and Jimmie note of Walnut, everybody knew everybody.

Rank 47 overall and first in Mississippi is a quiet sort of notoriety. The hosts introduce Falkner with a median household income near $55,000 and median home prices around $125,400, and with a town that abolished its own incorporation once to avoid paying towards a highway. The figures are ordinary. The five murders are not.