Why is Woonsocket, Rhode Island so murdery?

Woonsocket is a small city of about 41,500 in northeastern Rhode Island, eight square miles, twenty minutes from Providence and an hour from Boston, its population falling since a peak in 1950. The show's 24 murders within 25 miles are less a Woonsocket story than a Providence commuter belt one: a ring of small towns at three, eleven, sixteen and nineteen miles, then Boston-side suburbs out at the edge of the radius. Only episode 225, three victims in the city itself, happens here.

The count is cumulative, not the work of one outlier. Thirteen episodes share the 24 victims; the biggest is episode 395 with four, and three episodes carry three each. The spread runs from 1961 (episode 508) to 2008 (episode 75), with the 1990s carrying five episodes and eight victims.

It counts the show's cases, not the region's crime statistics. The show picks the towns, and around Woonsocket it picked a great many of them.