Why is Northport, New York so murdery?

Northport sits on the north shore of Long Island, in Suffolk County, about an hour and a quarter's drive from New York City and a few minutes from the water: commuter belt with a harbour. It began as Great Cow Harbor, eight houses in the 1830s, took its present name in 1837 and grew on shipbuilding, with three shipyards and five sets of marine railways by the 1870s. In 1967 the power station added four 600-foot stacks, visible from Connecticut. Population in 2022, as the hosts told it: 7,259.

The show's six murders within 25 miles arrive in four episodes across four towns, spread from 1962 to 2001. Only episode 264 happens in Northport itself; the rest sit 15 and 17 miles off along the same shore, in Westport, Belle Terre and Amityville. No single case carries the count: two episodes have two victims each, two have one.

None of that is a crime rate. It is the show's case list, and the show picks the towns. This one keeps getting picked because it is a handsome shore with a long memory.