Why is Largo, Maryland so murdery?

Largo sits about half an hour out from Washington DC, forty five minutes from Baltimore and half an hour from Bethesda, with the other cases scattered twelve to twenty four miles around it. Prince George's County was put together in 1696, and the town took its name from a plantation sold in 1745, which in turn looked to a Scottish bay. Episode 621 calls it leafy and upper-middle-class, with a median household income well above the national figure.

The 27 murders within 25 miles come in six episodes between 1979 and 2017, so the spread is decades rather than one bad year. Two episodes carry seven victims each, episode 621 in the town itself and episode 573 seventeen miles away, which is half the total. The rest are twos and threes in Lothian, McLean and Cape St. Claire, plus six in Elkridge between 1979 and 1989.

This is a count of the show's cases, not a crime rate. James and Jimmie pick the towns, and this corner of Maryland keeps giving them reasons to come back.