Why is the Libertyville, Iowa area so murdery, by episodes?

Libertyville sits in Jefferson County, south-east Iowa, an hour and fifty minutes from Des Moines and about three and a half hours from St Louis. It was platted in 1845, and in the early 1990s it held around 360 people while the whole county held about 4,000. Jefferson County had gone seventeen years without a murder when, in September 1991, a farmer and antique dealer was shot and dismembered on his own land. Episode 186 has that one to itself.

The Libertyville area reaches past the town. Agency, fourteen miles away, brings two victims from May 2012: two households in a trailer with a single neighbour, and a quarrel from March. Bonaparte, twenty-two miles off in Van Buren County near the Missouri and Illinois line, adds five from October 2006, where a lumber yard and grain elevator business built a large house on a bluff over the Des Moines River.

One episode carries five of the eight; two more supply the rest. Dates run 1991, 2006 and 2012, and the thread is the roads between three towns, none more than twenty-two miles from Libertyville. That is enough for 38th overall and second in Iowa.