Why is the Menomonie, Wisconsin area so murdery, by episodes?

Menomonie is a town of 16,721 in Dunn County, Wisconsin, and the show takes a while to reach it. French fur traders arrived in the late 18th century to find a large Sioux population. A trading post followed in 1788, a permanent settlement in 1830, and a lumber industry that ran until the company closed in 1901. For the show that makes two episodes, seven murders and two towns.

Episode 647 carries six of the killings, in Menomonie between July 1985 and March 1987. The story belongs to a lounge singer who taught himself piano in the basement. He played Motown and Sinatra in hotel lounges across Wisconsin and Minnesota, and a booker compared his voice to bourbon. Episode 731 adds one more, ten miles out in Spring Brook, in March 2018. That killing was caught in fragments, on a phone and in a car, and in the memory of a young woman.

The Menomonie area ranks 68th overall, and second in Wisconsin. The rank comes from one bad stretch of the 1980s, with a small town down the road adding a single case three decades later. Dunn County keeps its murders close together.