Each year various news organizations look at factors like public schools, crime rate and diversity to come up with definitively numbered lists of the best and worst places to live in America. Having grown up in a town that's one of the best is obviously bad news because it proves that contrary to all that, "Man if I could only get out of this place" talk during high school, the problem was you. If, however, you were in the enviable spot of growing up in one of the bottom feeders, well, you can go back to having sex with that microwaved jelly donut because, fuck it, you're a product of your environment. But even if it turns out your town wasn't the school of hard knocks you'd always thought it was, you still might have an excuse. That's because you probably spent quite a bit of your time in one of these seven towns, many of which are worse than anything they can throw at you in Battle Mountain, NV (The worst town in America according to The Washington Post). Advertisement

7 Cabot Cove (Murder She Wrote) Crime Rate:

At first, Cabot Cove doesn't seem all that bad. It's an idyllic coastal community of only 3,000, so you can't complain about the atmosphere. Also, for a town in the typically unwashed state of Maine, the townsfolk are relatively attractive, consistently looking (and for some reason acting) like they just stepped off the set of a soap opera. Continue Reading Below Advertisement However, none of that changes the fact that if you lived in Cabot Cove from 1984-1996, there was a pretty good chance that someone was going to murder your ass. With a body count of up to eight per episode, Cabot Cove experienced an outbreak of no less than 800 murders during the time that Jessica Fletcher lived there. And the crimes tended to be local on local, meaning that over half of the population was involved in a murder in a twelve year span. (Hear that, Camden, NJ?) Law Enforcement:



In a small town like Cabot Cove, you'd think that the limited suspect pool would have enabled the cops to solve murders pretty quickly. But time after time, the Cabot Cove PD would arrest the wrong person, falling for clearly planted clues like a suspect's hat being left at the scene of the crime, and ignoring obvious culprits like the guy in the corner laughing maniacally while steepling his bloody fingers. Continue Reading Below Advertisement Sure, Jessica Fletcher would set the cops straight in the end, but not before the cops would tell her to "leave this one up to the professionals." And just imagine what happened when the swinging queen of crime fiction was off on one of her many vacations. (Where people coincidentally were also always getting murdered.) If you live in Cabot Cove, you're either going to commit murder, get murdered, be falsely accused of murder, or you're a shit-stupid cop. Take your pick.