Why is Vaughn, Mississippi so murdery, by murders?

Vaughn sits in Yazoo County, a small town founded in 1830 on an old stagecoach line and named after a plantation owner nearby. By 2004 the town proper was a strip of collapsing buildings, though about 1,300 people lived in the surrounding area. The figures read out on the show describe a poor, mostly black community: 80.9 per cent black and 19.1 per cent white, median household income of $36,484, property and violent crime at roughly double the national average. Its earlier claim to notice was a railroad death: an engineer was killed in a train accident there in 1900, and more than 3,000 people turned out in 1953 for a bronze marker at the spot.

The whole count comes from one episode, 391, and three dates: 1994, 2004 and 2007. One of the cases involves a family that had farmed and ranched around the town for generations and kept its grocery store.

Five murders in a single episode puts Vaughn at 103 overall and second in Mississippi, which is a lot of weight for a strip of collapsing buildings to carry.