Why is Fleming-Neon, Kentucky so murdery?

Fleming-Neon sits in the south-east corner of Kentucky, in Letcher County, on the border with Virginia, and it exists because of coal. The Elkhorn Coal Corporation built it in 1913 to house miners at its first big mine, absorbing a nearby settlement called Chip along the way; for a while it was the centre of the local coal towns, with coal hauled out by train. The population, as told in 2017, is 728.

The show's seven murders within 25 miles come in only three episodes, spread across three towns: four in Fleming-Neon itself, one seven miles away in Pound, Virginia, and two 25 miles off in Raccoon. Episode 38 does most of the lifting, with four victims on its own. The cases run from July 1971 to May 1986, so the show's visits cluster in the 1970s and 1980s rather than stretching across decades.

That puts it 178th overall and first in Kentucky. It is a count of the show's cases, not of crime; the show picks the towns.