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

Lashmeet sits at the far southern end of West Virginia, in Mercer County, and the Lashmeet area follows the roads out from there: Princeton seven miles away, Skygusty at seventeen, Pemberton at twenty, Beckley at twenty-four. Princeton, the county seat, is named for a battle, the county for a general who died in it. The land was farmed in severe isolation at first, settlers running their own salt works, tannery, grist mill and foundry, until the first mine opened on Mill Creek in 1884 and coal operators moved in from out of state.

Five episodes, eighteen murders, thirteenth overall and first in West Virginia, with the years running from 1956 to 2020, so this is not one bad decade. Most of the weight comes from episode 304, which carries thirteen victims across two cases, from 1988 and 1969. The rest is thinner: episode 565 takes in 1980 and 1956, episode 434 a 2011 case, episode 524 a 2019 case, and episode 648, in Lashmeet itself, a case from 2020.