The Definitive Guide to Missouri’s 10 Most Dangerous Places

By now you've likely seen dozens of sites claim to reveal the most dangerous cities and towns in Missouri, but many are based on all kinds of different data. I thought it might be helpful to scrunch them all down to one definitive guide to the 10 places in Missouri where you are in the most peril.

For this ranking, I've pulled a decade of data for Missouri cities and towns from the FBI Crime Data Explorer. I've also incorporated anecdotal data from the most recent most dangerous city rankings from 24/7 Wall St, Property Club and Only In Your State.

I focused on what the FBI defines as violent crime "composed of four offenses: homicide (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter), rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes involve force or threat of force." I decided to not include property crime since "stuff" can be replaced. This is a list of places in Missouri where you are physically in the most danger. The results of combining all this data was surprising to me (with the exception of the top 3) and perhaps it will be to you also.

At the end of the day, no one area in Missouri has more violent crime than St. Louis. While I think the "murder capital" label is unfair for most of the St. Louis area, there's no denying the sheer number of violent attacks that happen in that part of Missouri. There's also no mistaking the rise (in a bad way) of both Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri.