Why is the Greer, South Carolina area so murdery, by episodes?

Greer sits in the north west of South Carolina, where Greenville and Spartanburg counties meet, at the head of a string of small towns. The railway between Atlanta and Charlotte put it on the map in 1873, and cotton and clothing factories kept it there until cheap imported T-shirts arrived in the 1970s and people started predicting a ghost town. It did not become one. The population is 35,131, enough for rank 24 overall and first in South Carolina.

Four episodes claimed by the Greer area, eleven murders between them, over four towns. Two of the episodes carry four victims apiece, the others two and one, so no single afternoon carries the total. The towns sit at twelve, sixteen and twenty-one miles from the centre, all inside the same textile country that made Greer.

The decades spread too. Episode 671's four killings, at Traveler's Rest, fall between 1987 and 1990; episode 580's two come in 1995 and 2002; episode 50, in Easley, supplies four from a single day in April 2008; episode 618, in Greer itself, is the newest, October 2021. The hotspot is a slow drive out from the centre, one town at a time.