Why is Oak Grove, Oregon so murdery?

Oak Grove is a Portland suburb in Clackamas County, about twenty minutes out, population 17,382 as James and Jimmie gave it in 2025. It was platted in 1890, got a trolley about 1893, and took its name from the grove of oaks where a surveying party stopped for lunch; the post office then staged a small naming coup that forced a neighbouring station to give up the name. The town's own episode supplies 9 of its 12 murders, a case whose dates run from 1972 to 1987.

The other three come from the ring around it: 11 miles out in Gresham in 1989, and 19 miles out in rural Colton on a Mother's Day around 2017, two victims in a town of 3,392 with no tavern and no grocery store. So the count is not a drift of small cases. One episode carries three quarters of it, and the rest are single murders spread from the 1970s to the 2010s.

It counts the show's cases, not the county's crime figures. The show picks the towns; Oak Grove simply had a bad enough story to be picked.