Why is Traveler's Rest, South Carolina so murdery?

Traveler's Rest sits in the far north-west corner of South Carolina, in Greenville County, and it exists because of a road. In 1794 the state paid 2,000 dollars for a wagon road from Greenville into the Blue Ridge Mountains, running through Asheville and on into east Tennessee. This was the first properly equipped stop where travellers sorted themselves out before the climb, which is a decent origin story for a town of 7,670. It has been incorporated twice, in 1891 and again in 1959, after the first attempt expired.

The show's nine murders within 25 miles arrive in three episodes and three towns. Two of them do the heavy lifting: episode 671, set in the town itself, carries four victims across dates from 1987 to 1990, and episode 50, out at Easley, carries four more from April 2008. Episode 618 adds one in Greer in 2021. The nearest episode opens in New York state, which tells you how far the show will travel to reach a mountain town. These are the show's cases, not a crime rate; it picks the towns.