Why is Raynham, Massachusetts so murdery?

Raynham sits in the southeastern corner of Massachusetts, a town of about 13,575 that was settled in 1639 and, as James and Jimmie tell it, was the first town in the United States founded by a woman. Iron workers came first, after a big iron ore discovery, and 23 of them formed a local iron works the town rallied round. The show calls the place affluent and about twice as safe as the state average on violent crime, which makes it an odd place to start looking for murder. Yet it tops Massachusetts on this league, ranked 30 overall, with 4 of its 17 cases inside the town itself.

Those 17 murders arrive in 9 episodes spread across 8 towns, and they run from 1961 to 2008: a young mother in East Providence, a teenager on a bicycle in Raynham in 1978, a family home in Warren in 2008. No single episode carries the count. The largest, episodes 307 and 225, hold three victims each; most hold one or two.

The show picks the towns, so this is a count of episodes, not of crime.