Why is Lafayette, California so murdery?

Lafayette is Contra Costa County, East Bay, population 25,384, and it got its name by post office application. In 1857 the man applying wanted Centerville, but California already had one of those, so he used the name of his wife's hometown in Indiana instead. A French military officer of the American Revolutionary War is in the chain somewhere, two towns removed.

The show's eight murders within 25 miles arrive in four episodes across three towns, and they are spread thin across the decades: Terra Linda in 1975, Burlingame in 1978 and again in 1991, Lafayette itself in 2005. Only one of the eight happened in Lafayette, a single victim in a case dated October 2005.

The count is carried by one episode rather than by a pattern. Episode 107, in Burlingame, has four victims, half the total; the others have two, one and one. Worth saying plainly: this ranks the show's cases, not crime. James and Jimmie go where the stories are, and a radius that reaches Marin and San Mateo as well as Contra Costa will always collect a few.