Why is Whitewood, South Dakota so murdery?

Whitewood sits in Lawrence County in western South Dakota, twenty minutes from Deadwood, with a population the hosts gave as 901 in 2023. It was platted in 1888 while Deadwood was booming, then grew when the Chicago and Northwestern Railway reached it, one of the towns built along that line and named for the creek beside it. The show's three cases here run from 1991 to 2004, a modern tally spread across a decade.

Only one happened in Whitewood itself: episode 386, from April 1991, about a couple who married in 1958 and raised three sons in town, the husband strict, loud and a heavy drinker but not violent. The other two sit within a short drive, episode 453 in Spearfish, nine miles away, in 2000, and episode 596 in Belle Fourche, eighteen miles off, in 2004. One victim each, so no single awful day carries the count. Three episodes, three towns, three victims.

That is the honest shape of it. This counts the show's cases, not the region's crime statistics; the show picks where to look, and around Whitewood it looked three times.