Why is Pavillion, Wyoming so murdery?

Pavillion sits in Fremont County in central Wyoming: 230 people, and a history out of all proportion to that. The area had one of the last big land rushes of the West in 1906, when nearly ten thousand people turned up for the opening of a reservation. Land went for a dollar fifty an acre, then a dollar twenty five, and the crowds went away again.

All four of the show's murders within 25 miles happened in Pavillion itself, at zero miles, and all four come from one episode. Episode 359 carries a case dated September 1980 and four victims on its own. There is no slow accumulation across the decades here, no string of small towns adding up: one episode, one town, one count.

That makes Pavillion 347th overall and first in Wyoming, on the strength of a single case. It is a measure of the show's caseload rather than the local crime rate. James and Jimmie choose the towns; this time they chose one with 230 people in it.