Why is Kalamazoo Township, Michigan so murdery, by episodes?

Kalamazoo Township is less one place than two, sitting in unconnected pieces on the northern edge of Kalamazoo, in Kalamazoo County. About 22,705 people live there and the reputation is quiet suburban. It began as Arcadia Township, organised the same day as the county and once covering all eight northern tier townships; Richland and Cooper were carved off, and in 1836 the name changed to Kalamazoo on the same day Bronson became Kalamazoo. A township with that much paperwork behind it can be forgiven for keeping its head down.

Episode 491 carries the count on its own: eight victims across five cases, a stretch from April to June 1964, then March, July and August 1972, then a last one in 2017. Three of the five fall inside six months of 1972, which is enough to trouble a suburb's quiet.

The story opens with a family in the 1940s: a mother on nights in a paper factory, a father who beat the family, made the boys drink whisky at seven and threw coins on the floor so they would fight for them. Rank 135 rests on that house and the years that followed.