Why is the West Liberty, Iowa area so murdery, by episodes?

West Liberty is in far eastern Iowa, close enough to the Illinois border that the state line is a short drive. It is a town of about 3,800 people, with a main street and a name picked by a founder's niece who preferred the sound of a town in Ohio. The West Liberty area reaches out to Muscatine, 15 miles away on the Mississippi, and Clarence, 24 miles off in Cedar County, so a river town and two farming towns share a corner of the map.

The cases come at Halloween 1964, on a February night in 1979, the day after Christmas 1984, an October night in 1992 and in 1995. Four episodes, seven murders, never more than two in any one of them. The count comes from separate cases, two of them in West Liberty itself. It is the top-ranked hotspot in Iowa.