Why is the Westport, Connecticut area so murdery, by episodes?

Westport sits in the southwestern corner of Connecticut, in Fairfield County, on Long Island Sound. It was incorporated in 1835, taking land from Fairfield, Weston and Norwalk, then spent decades as the country's leading onion-growing town, with a shipping trade built largely to move the onions. Its population, as the hosts gave it in 2025, is 27,168.

The Westport area is really the Sound: Westport, Redding and Newtown on the Connecticut side, Northport and Belle Terre on the north shore of Long Island, 13 to 20 miles from the centre. What ties them is water, money and the commute to New York; Belle Terre is a 0.9 square mile tip of land reached through a gate house.

Five episodes and 11 murders put Westport 17th overall and second in Connecticut. The cases run from 1962 to 1995: one at the start of the sixties, the other four bunched into the dozen years from 1984. One episode carries five of the 11, two carry two each and two carry a single, so the count is part one crowded case and part quiet accumulation.