Why is Gans, Oklahoma so murdery?

Gans sits in far eastern Oklahoma, close to the Arkansas line, in a dispersed rural stretch of Sacoya County that was once part of the Cherokee Nation. A post office arrived in 1896, farming paid the early bills, and the population in 2023 was 336. It ranks 129 overall and first in Oklahoma, with nine cases in the show inside 25 miles.

Those nine come from three episodes and three towns, and they bunch rather than spread: the cases are dated 1981, 1982 and 1984, all within a few years of each other. Just one happened in Gans itself. Episode 365 brings two victims twenty miles away in Van Buren, Arkansas, and episode 641 brings six, twenty-three miles away in Poteau. One episode therefore carries two thirds of the count.

Which is the honest caveat. This is a tally of the show's cases, not of crime. James and Jimmie choose the towns, and a small rural county always travels better on a leaderboard than a big city does. Nine cases does not make Gans murdery. It makes it a dot on a map the podcast happened to like.