Why is Raccoon, Kentucky so murdery?

Raccoon is a dot on the map in Pike County, Kentucky, at the junction of two state routes 7.7 miles northeast of Pikeville. It is named for the raccoons that were plentiful when the town was started, and its post office ran from 1896 to 1959. The population given in 2022 was 1,774.

The show's two visits to this part of the state land within 25 miles of each other. Episode 282 stays in Raccoon and covers two killings, dated 1971 and 1986, including a sawmill owner with hundreds of acres, a bootleg liquor sideline and a divorce that had been in the courts since the mid 1960s. Episode 38 goes 25 miles to a Letcher County town that a coal company built in 1913 to house its miners; that episode carries four victims from 1985.

Six killings, then, from two episodes and two towns, spread over four dates in the 1970s and 1980s. No single case carries the count, though the four at the coal town do most of the lifting. And it counts the show's cases, not crime statistics: the show picks the towns.