Why is Willard, Missouri so murdery?

Willard sits in Green County in southwestern Missouri, about 20 minutes from Springfield, a railroad town that got its start when a line ran through to Kansas City in 1884. The track is a walking trail now. It has the look of somewhere the show reaches for when it wants a quiet setting for a loud story.

That is roughly what happened. Nine murders in two episodes fall within 25 miles, and only two of them in Willard itself, both from episode 449, with dates in May and October 1989. The other seven arrive in one go in episode 582, from a farming town 24 miles out and about 35 minutes from Springfield, where two dairy families related by marriage sit at the centre. So the count is not a drumbeat of cases down the decades. It is one very heavy episode and one small one, in 1987 and 1989.

Worth saying plainly: this counts the show's cases, not crime statistics. The show picks the towns, and a rank of 136 says more about a pair of episodes than about the place.