Why is LaPlace, Louisiana so murdery?

LaPlace sits in St John the Baptist Parish in south-east Louisiana, about half an hour outside New Orleans, one of the old German Coast settlements strung along the Mississippi. It is the sort of place a big city quietly leans on: close enough to commute from, far enough to keep its own name. The name itself came off a railway depot, which is how a fair number of American towns got theirs.

Its ranking is not a long accumulation. All eight murders arrive in a single episode, episode 691, and a single case running from October 1996 to July 1997, with all eight inside the town itself at no distance at all. One story, one stretch of months, one parish spilling into two more. There is no decades-long drift here, and no pile-up of separate cases.

Worth saying plainly: this counts the cases the show chose to cover, not the town's crime statistics. The show picks the towns. LaPlace supplied one story large enough to carry a whole ranking by itself.