Why is Prairie Village, Kansas so murdery?

Prairie Village sits in Johnson County, far eastern Kansas, close enough to Kansas City to count as a suburb of it. The land began as 160 acres of farmland bought in 1858, then got remade in the 1940s when a developer bought it for housing for soldiers returning from the Second World War. Shopping centres and subdivisions followed, with names like Corinth Hills and Somerset Hills. Population 22,812, as the hosts tell it. James and Jimmie set the scene first, which is the show's usual way of saying: ordinary place, then the floor gives way.

The league counts eleven murders within 25 miles, but they come in only three episodes across three towns. Two fall in Prairie Village itself, eight in Lenexa nine miles away, one in Edgerton twenty-three miles away. The dates run from April 1980 to 2000: two decades, not one bad year.

One episode does the heavy lifting, with episode 577 carrying eight of the eleven. That is the shape of it, and it is worth saying plainly that this counts the show's cases, not the town's crime figures. The show picks where it goes; the map follows.