The most ridiculous place for a murder of the week

[Billdo]

@Maus_Magill

I’d always wanted to visit the Caribbean, but the small, quaint island of Saint Marie is definitely off my destination short list.

And if I did, I would make damn sure I didn’t wind up in an isolated location in a group of five people seemingly randomly thrown together.

[si_blakely]

The fictional northland town of Brokenwood, NZ (pop 5000, decreasing rapidly) seems to have a crime rate that would have it run out of residents pretty quickly.

The Brokenwood Mysteries

[RTFirefly]

Bisbee, Arizona, where J.A. Jance’s Joanna Brady is sheriff, is my personal “how the fuck can such a small town have so much carnage?” favorite.

The real-life Bisbee has a population of about 6000, and Jance’s fictional version might be a bit bigger than that, but it’s still unquestonably a small town.

[digs]

@RivkahChaya

[trivia hijack]My grandfather had the crime beat for the Wichita Eagle for almost 50 years-- he was the primary reporter, then the chief editor-- and retired just before BTK came on the scene. One of the reasons that BTK didn’t get as much ink as he’d hoped is that there wasn’t anyone really in charge yet after my grandfather had left (he left kind of abruptly due to illness). They had new reporters covering in sort of patchwork, and another editor working crime on the side. They actually brought my grandfather in to consult a little-- I’ve no idea what he said. If BTK had gotten started 5 years earlier, he would have been under a veteran editor who had covered crime during the Depression.[/hijack]

That makes no sense if we don’t know what BTK is, and Wichita was barely mentioned (the post was about Honolulu).

Google says BTK = “bind, torture, and kill”… is that it? Can you explain?

[thelurkinghorror]

@digs

That makes no sense if we don’t know what BTK is, and Wichita was barely mentioned (the post was about Honolulu).

Google says BTK = “bind, torture, and kill”… is that it? Can you explain?

You were on the right track: BTK Killer.

She mentioned it because the post she quoted was comparing Honolulu and Wichita, which normally has low crime except for at least one certain outlier.

[teela_brown]

The Masterpiece Mystery series Grantchester is set in - surprise - Grantchester, a quaint little village just outside of Cambridge. Murder seems to occur frequently in the village, and the local vicar is always nearby. The vicar always knows whodunit, to the local constable’s irritation. Then after all the mayhem of the week is done, the vicar stands up in the church and tells us all to get along.

[thelurkinghorror]

Oh, and the tiny English village in Hot Fuzz has a ridiculous amount of murders - but that’s the entire point.

The vicar also tells everyone to get along towards the end (it’s a ruse).

[Kobal2]

Charming, California has got to be up there. It’s a one horse town - maybe two big streets, a couple dozen cops tops. Wiki has it at 15.000 souls. Yet the Sons of Anarchy rack up bodies almost every episode, or lose some. Well, ok, most of them just get shot and move on, and there are more brawls than outright gangland shootouts. Still. Not much murder in absolute, but relatively speaking ? The place would ping every radar from here to Chelyabinsk.

[thelurkinghorror]

To be fair, a lot of SoA occurs elsewhere - Stockton is the closest city, sometimes the go up to Oakland and murder a few as well. And I don’t pretend it’s realistic, but IIRC they do ping radar and the PD gets subsumed by the sheriff, and later others (FBI?) come in.

[Typo_Negative]

@thelurkinghorror

To be fair, a lot of SoA occurs elsewhere - Stockton is the closest city, sometimes the go up to Oakland and murder a few as well. And I don’t pretend it’s realistic, but IIRC they do ping radar and the PD gets subsumed by the sheriff, and later others (FBI?) come in.

In reality, Stockton is tough fucking town. Seriously, it’s ugly.

If I were a fugitive, I would stay out of Eastern Kentucky. Raylan Givins shot about 13 people per season for 6 seasons, most of them fatally. I can’t imagine anyone with that high a body count being allowed to carry a gun anymore.

[Baker]

@kunilou

Dodge City, Kansas only had about 1,200 people at the time Gunsmoke took place, pardner, but Marshall Matt Dillon himself killed 145 people. Granted, the marshall was shot 59 times, so he had some justification. But think about the implications of the local law enforcement killing more than 10% of the population.

And since everyone of those 145 desperados got what was coming to them, one can only imagine the carnage they inflicted!

I remember one episode, my favorite from the long, long series. It was mentioned that it was the only episode of Gunsmoke in which no firearms were used. It was Baker’s Dozen.