Why is Falkner, Mississippi so murdery?

Falkner is a village of 514 in northern Mississippi, about an hour and twenty from Memphis, and it grew up around a depot that a railroad company named after its president. The town has been incorporated twice, with a gap in between when the aldermen dissolved it rather than pay its share of Highway 15. Small enough that a road bill can unmake it.

The five murders are really three stories in three towns. Episode 588 stays at home, one victim in 1981. Episode 340 is 25 miles away in 1985, one victim. Episode 138, eight miles off in Walnut, carries three of the five by itself. So the count is not a crime wave along one road: one episode does most of the lifting, across three separate years in the 1980s and 1990s.

This is a ranking of the show's cases, not of local crime. James and Jimmie go where the stories are, and northern Mississippi has supplied a few.