Why is Libertyville, Illinois so murdery?

Libertyville sits in Lake County in northern Illinois, about an hour from Chicago, one of a loose string of towns and suburbs on the city's northern edge. Eight episodes land within twenty-five miles, but only three of the twenty-eight victims are from Libertyville itself. The rest are spread through Arlington Heights, McHenry, Spring Grove, Elk Grove Village, Streamwood, Bloomingdale and Woodstock, so this is less a local murder cluster than a wide net thrown over the commuter belt.

The cases run from the early 1970s to the mid 2000s, with clusters in the 1980s and 1990s. Most episodes bring three victims apiece: a family in a planned suburb, a retirement complex, a young woman found in a field. Episode 184 is the outlier, eight victims over dates running from 1987 to 1997, and it does much of the lifting on its own.

None of this is a crime statistic. It counts the show's cases, and James and Jimmie choose the towns, so a place ranks when enough of their files fall inside the twenty-five-mile ring.