Why is the Skidmore, Missouri area so murdery, by episodes?

Skidmore is a town of 250 in Nottaway County, northwestern Missouri. Maryville is 12 miles away; Rulo is 25 miles off, in Nebraska's far south-eastern corner where the Missouri River marks the meeting of Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri. It covers 0.63 square miles: a dying farm town of 165 people in the mid-1980s. Call it the Skidmore area: three small towns, two states, all within 25 miles of Skidmore.

The cases run from 1985 to 2004. In 1985, two people were killed in Rulo, high-school sweethearts married at sixteen and running a hog farm. In 1994, a teacher and mother was killed on a farm south of Maryville. In 2004, episode 625 spends its opening on a girl's violent childhood: belts, brooms and cords, raw onions, a winter night locked outside. No single episode carries the count: episode 74 has two victims, episodes 625 and 666 one each.

James and Jimmie introduce the town through its reputation: a 1981 shooting in front of a tavern, where fifty people saw it and all denied seeing anything. Three episodes and four murders put it third in Missouri and 54th overall, a lot of podcast for 250 people.