Why is Ovando, Montana so murdery?

Ovando is a town of about 80 people in Powell County, in western central Montana, roughly 75 miles northwest of Helena. It has a long memory: people have lived in the area for more than 14,000 years, and before settlers arrived in the 1870s it was buffalo hunting country fought over by native tribes. The railroad never came, a fire burned most of the town in 1919, and what is left is small enough that its population fits in a sentence.

All three of Ovando's murders within 25 miles come from a single episode, episode 14, dated July 1988. That is the whole of the town's league position: rank 434 overall, second in Montana. Three victims in one case will do that.

Worth saying plainly that this counts the show's cases, not crime statistics. James and Jimmie pick where to go, and a town of 80 that got one episode looks murdery on a map for reasons that have nothing to do with the local crime rate.