I split my time between a rural town and an urban center. I think the murder rate is higher per 100k in the smaller area but they don't really report or have the means to effectively confirm a murder, I've seen multiple people in the last decade die of extremely unusual circumstances that were ruled suicide or accident. A man with both hands taped together inside a sleeping bag that 'shot himself in the head' A man that was 'accidentally' hit in the back of the head with a metal baseball bat.

Over the last decade that I've been here, someone has died in an extremely suspicious way and there are never any reported homicides. Yet if you calculate those deaths out per 100k/year the rate is much higher than the urban area I spend time in. Yet everyone in the rural area is afraid of the dangerous city. In the end, my guess is that a lot of rural areas don't have the same quality of reporting or police presents that a city can afford.