Why is Oakley, Kansas so murdery, by murders?

Oakley sits in western Kansas, about four hours from Denver, and covers 1.93 square miles across three counties: Logan, Thomas and Gove. Its motto asks "Where the hell are we?" and admits Google Maps doesn't work out here. Travellers off the Smoky Hill Trail settled the place in the 1870s and 1880s. It was Carlyle, then Cleveland, then Oakley in 1885, and the early town burned in 1904 and was rebuilt in brick and concrete.

The population was 1,855 in 2021, down 10 per cent since 1990. The median age is almost 42, and an unusually high 7.2 per cent of residents are 85 or over.

All three murders claimed here come from episode 221, in two cases: December 1988 and May 1990, a year and a half apart. Three victims in a town of under two thousand people is enough for a rank of 183 overall and third in Kansas, and no other case falls within 25 miles.