Why is West Liberty, Iowa so murdery?

West Liberty sits in far eastern Iowa, in Muscatine County, close enough to the Illinois border that the show's map barely has to move. Its seven murders arrive in four episodes and three towns: three in West Liberty itself, two in Muscatine 15 miles away, and two in Clarence, 24 miles out. Rank 175 overall, second in Iowa.

The cases are not one bad decade. The dates run from a Halloween night in 1964 to October 1992, taking in 1979 and 1984 on the way, so the show keeps finding reasons to come back to this corner of the state across three decades.

The town's own three are the strangest bit of accounting: the same October 1992 case is told across episodes 734 and 736, and between them they carry all three. Elsewhere it is two victims per episode, quietly adding up. Worth saying plainly that this counts the show's cases rather than the region's crime; James and Jimmie go where the stories are.