Why is Okarche, Oklahoma so murdery?

Okarche sits in Canadian and Kingfisher counties, about 45 minutes from Oklahoma City, small enough at roughly 1,300 people that the city is a commute rather than a neighbour. The land was Cheyenne and Arapaho country until the land run of 1892, the post office opened in 1890, and the name is a mash-up of Oklahoma, Arapaho and Cheyenne. By the late 1890s it was mostly a German immigrant town where German was the common language.

All six of the show's cases within 25 miles come from episode 275, and all six are in Okarche itself, at zero miles, from a single case dated October 1979. A pastor and his wife are among the six victims. There is no trail of separate cases spread across the decades here and no string of small towns along one road: one episode carries the entire count.

That is worth saying plainly, because the league counts the show's cases and not the town's crime rate. The show picks the towns. Okarche got picked once, for one terrible autumn, and rank 233 is what a single episode looks like.