Why is Farmington, New Mexico so murdery?

Farmington sits in the far northwest corner of New Mexico, in San Juan County, close to the Four Corners and the northern edge of Arizona. Three rivers meet there, which is why it started life as Junction City; by 1901 it had been incorporated as Farmington with 548 people. It has since had a mass UFO sighting in 1950, reported by about 5,000 people, and a nuclear detonation 50 miles east in 1967. James introduces the modern town as about 46,700 people with high crime and a difficult reputation.

The show's five cases within 25 miles come in two episodes and two towns. Episode 701 carries four of them, in Farmington itself, spread across November 1996, March 1998 and June 2000, beginning on the Sunday before Thanksgiving with a drive north to Choke Cherry Canyon. Episode 82 adds one, six miles away in Flora Vista, in February 1994: a seventeen-year-old cheerleader who had moved from Phoenix and wanted to be a nurse.

That is rank 270 overall and second in New Mexico. It counts the show's cases, not the town's crime rate, since the show chooses where to look.