Why is Kalamazoo Township, Michigan so murdery?

Kalamazoo Township is an odd shape for a murder league entry: two unconnected pieces stuck to the northern edge of Kalamazoo, a suburban sort of address with about 22,705 residents and a quiet reputation. Its rank of 162 overall, and first in Michigan, rests on a single episode, 491, which carries all eight of the show's cases within 25 miles.

That is the strange arithmetic here. Eight victims, one episode, and dates scattered from April to June 1964 through March, July and August 1972 and on to 2017, so the show is not documenting one bad year but returning to the same ground across the decades. The episode opens with a family in the township in the 1940s, a mother working nights in a paper factory and a father who drank and beat the family, which sets the tone before any of the dated cases arrive.

None of this is a crime statistic. The show picks its towns, and here it picked one township, once, and got eight victims out of the visit.