Why is the High Point, North Carolina area so murdery, by episodes?

The High Point area is a manufacturing town with smaller towns hung around it. Four episodes and twelve murders cover four towns: High Point itself, Wallburg ten miles out, Summerfield at fifteen, Clemmons at twenty-two. High Point made tobacco and textiles from the late 1800s, and its position in the middle of the state made it a useful go-between for shipping. Two of the towns around it sit just outside bigger cities.

The count does not come from the centre. High Point, all 113,000 people of it, supplies one case, from 1991. Summerfield supplies seven, all of them in episode 409 and all between July 1984 and June 1985, so one episode carries more than half the hotspot.

The rest is a scatter. A single case in Wallburg in 2015, and three in Clemmons across 2009 and 2010, with cases running from the mid-1980s to the 2010s. For a hotspot built on small towns and one old manufacturing centre, that is a long, thin trail.