Why is Pleasant Grove, Arkansas so murdery, by episodes?

Pleasant Grove is a town of 335 people just outside Dover, in Stone County, Arkansas. It began as Red Stripe, named after the red iron ore in the soil, and it has sat in two counties over the years, first Independence and later Stone. A post office opened there in 1912. The name didn't stick: a local murder case brought publicity bad enough that the town took a new one.

The hotspot is that one town, and the count is that one episode. Episode 501 covers December 1987 and sixteen victims, all of them at Pleasant Grove, with no distance at all from the centre. Everything in the total comes from that month, and the neighbouring towns don't add a case.

That gives the entry a rank of 129 overall and third in Arkansas.