Why is the Shawnee Township, Ohio area so murdery, by episodes?

Shawnee Township sits in Allen County in north-west Ohio, close to Lima and nearer Fort Wayne than Columbus, and its motto, 'where nature meets history', promises more calm than the record delivers. It was remote enough that it was not officially settled until 1854, and not platted until 1872, when an investor bought a farm and decided to build a town there. About 12,105 people lived there in 2022.

The Shawnee Township area reaches well beyond the township line. Four of the five cases sit 15 to 19 miles out, in Edgewood, Dillsboro, Fairfield and Highland Heights, small towns with several of them looking towards Cincinnati, while only episode 323, whose case dates to October 2011, happens at the centre itself.

There is no mass killing and no single spectacular case. Five episodes carry five victims, one apiece, and the dates stretch from 1987 to 2014, four decades of the show returning to the same corner: a 21-year-old waitress and student, a Delta pilot, a cowboy who trained and shod horses, a retired man, a lawyer in his own practice. That is enough for rank 19 overall and second in Ohio.