Why is Simsbury, Connecticut so murdery?

Simsbury, in Hartford County in north central Connecticut, is a town of about 24,000. The hosts open on a tar and turpentine business, a fire that destroyed it, and an 1859 fuse factory explosion near the centre of town that killed seven women and one man. That is the introduction. The murders come later.

Sixteen murders in eight episodes across eight towns within 25 miles, from a 1965 case nine miles away in Barkhamsted to a 2015 one twenty miles off in Ellington, with stops in New Britain, Agawam, Bantam, Middletown and Chicopee in between. Only one of the sixteen happened in Simsbury itself. The case dates run 1965, 1973, 1979, 1992, 1993, 2003, 2011, 2014, 2015.

The count is not evenly built. Episode 613, in New Britain, accounts for seven of the sixteen on its own. The rest are single victims, apart from two episodes with two apiece. And it counts the show's cases, not the town's crime rate. The show chooses where to go; Simsbury mostly gets to be the name on the map.