Why is the Lawrenceburg, Tennessee area so murdery, by episodes?

The Lawrenceburg area is two towns in southern Tennessee: Lawrenceburg in Lawrence County and Pulaski, 17 miles away, in Giles County near the Alabama line. Lawrenceburg itself has 11,460 people as told in 2023, and a history stretching from a Spanish expedition that wintered nearby in 1540 and 1541 to a powder mill on Shoal Creek that is now a state park.

Eight murders across two episodes is a modest claim on the league, and most of the weight sits in one of them. Episode 310, set around Pulaski, carries five victims over four cases: one in 1974 and three in 1986. Episode 427, in Lawrenceburg, adds three more, from 1982 and 2015.

So the area is not one terrible year. It is a slow scatter of cases across four decades in two small towns, with long silences between them and then, around Pulaski, three in a single year.