Do you live in one of the murder capitals of Ohio?
We all watch the news with horror when we hear about a homicide that happens not that far away from us. While a murder just blocks or even a couple of towns away from your house would make anyone uneasy, in the long run, most likely, where you live is relatively safe.
To find the cities in Ohio with the most murders and the highest murder rates per capita, we used Saturday Night Science to compare the FBI crime data on murders for the 70 cities in the Buckeye State with over 5,000 residents.
What city has the highest murder rate in Ohio? The city with the highest murder rate in Ohio is Mount Healthy with 44 murders per 100,000 people.
What is the city in Ohio with highest number of murders? The city in Ohio with the highest number of murders is Columbus with 112 murders.
Read on below to see how we crunched the numbers and how your town in Ohio ranked. There were ‘only’ 70 cities in Ohio where a city reported a murder to the FBI, meaning 185 places had no murder.
44 per 100k · #1 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Hamilton County, Ohio
Mount Healthy is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky metropolitan area. The population was 6,098 at the 2010 census.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
37 per 100k · #2 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Cuyahoga County, Ohio
East Cleveland is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, and is the first suburb of Cleveland. The population was 17,843 at the 2010 census. East Cleveland is bounded by the city of Cleveland to its north, west, and a small section of its southwestern edge, and by Cleveland Heights to the east and the majority of its southern limits.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
30 per 100k · #3 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Cuyahoga County, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the state’s second most-populous county. Located along Lake Erie, the city proper has a population of 388,072, making Cleveland the 51st largest city in the United States, and the second-largest city in Ohio after Columbus. Greater Cleveland ranked as the 32nd-largest metropolitan area in the United States, with 2,055,612 people in 2016. The city anchors the Cleveland-Akron-Canton Combined Statistical Area, which had a population of 3,515,646 in 2010 and ranks 15th in the United States.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
30 per 100k · #4 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Montgomery County, Ohio
Dayton is the sixth-largest city in the state of Ohio and is the county seat of Montgomery County. A small portion of the city extends into Greene County. In the 2010 census, the population was 141,527, and the Dayton metropolitan area had 799,232 residents, making it Ohio’s fourth-largest metropolitan area, after Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus and the 63rd-largest in the United States. The Dayton-Springfield-Greenville Combined Statistical Area had a population of 1,080,044 in 2010, making it the 43rd-largest in the United States. Dayton is within Ohio’s Miami Valley region, just north of the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky metropolitan area.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
26 per 100k · #5 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Montgomery County, Ohio
Trotwood is a city in Montgomery County, Ohio, United States. The population was 24,431 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city is served by the Trotwood-Madison City School District.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
22 per 100k · #6 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Hamilton County, Ohio
Cincinnati is a major city in the U.S. state of Ohio that serves as county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the north side of the confluence of the Licking with the Ohio River. With a population of 298,800, Cincinnati is the third-largest city in Ohio and the 65th-largest city in the United States. It has the fastest growing economic power of the Midwestern United States and 28th-biggest metropolitan statistical area in the United States, the biggest in Ohio. The city drives the Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington combined statistical area, which had a population of 2,172,191 in the 2010 census.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
20 per 100k · #7 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Tuscarawas County, Ohio
Uhrichsville is a city in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, United States. The population was 5,413 at the 2010 census. Claymont City School District is the major education provider for the city of Uhrichsville and for the village of Dennison, Ohio. The Twin cities is a nickname used to describe Uhrichsville and Dennison because they are adjacent and similar.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
19 per 100k · #8 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Trumbull County, Ohio
Youngstown is a city in and the county seat of Mahoning County in the U.S. state of Ohio, with small portions extending into Trumbull County. According to the 2010 Census, Youngstown had a city proper population of 66,982, while the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area it anchors contained 565,773 people in Mahoning and Trumbull counties in Ohio, and Mercer County in Pennsylvania.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
17 per 100k · #9 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Allen County, Ohio
Lima is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in northwestern Ohio along Interstate 75 approximately 72 miles north of Dayton and 78 miles south-southwest of Toledo.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
17 per 100k · #10 highest murder rate in Ohio
Located in
Scioto County, Ohio
Portsmouth is a city in and the county seat of Scioto County, Ohio, United States. It lies in far southern Ohio, just east of the mouth of the Scioto River at the Ohio River, and across from Kentucky. The population was 20,226 at the 2010 census.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Ohio’s statewide median.
On the map
Where Ohio’s murders happen
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we calculated the murder capitals of Ohio
While there are surveys and public polls on what cities in a state are the most dangerous, we wanted to rely on something other than speculation and opinion. Instead, we used Saturday Night Science to compare the hard numbers from the FBI’s last year of reporting. Specifically, we analyzed the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, which summarizes the number of murders in each city annually.
We only looked at every single city in Ohio for which FBI data was available for the most recent FBI Crime In The United States. That left us with 70 cities to rank.
We took the number of murders per capita as the ranking factor. The place with the most murders per capita based on the most recent data is Mount Healthy. It is our eleventh time ranking the places with the most murders per capita in Ohio. We updated the list for 2026.
The full plate
Murder Rates By City In Ohio
Click any column to sort. Search by city name.
| Rank | City | Population | Murders | Murders/100K |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mount Healthy | 6,809 | 3 | 44 |
| 2 | East Cleveland | 13,336 | 5 | 37 |
| 3 | Cleveland | 362,762 | 109 | 30 |
| 4 | Dayton | 134,857 | 40 | 30 |
| 5 | Trotwood | 22,895 | 6 | 26 |
| 6 | Cincinnati | 311,599 | 68 | 22 |
| 7 | Uhrichsville | 5,122 | 1 | 20 |
| 8 | Youngstown | 58,850 | 11 | 19 |
| 9 | Lima | 34,552 | 6 | 17 |
| 10 | Portsmouth | 17,343 | 3 | 17 |
| 11 | Martins Ferry | 6,024 | 1 | 17 |
| 12 | Upper Sandusky | 6,632 | 1 | 15 |
| 13 | Euclid | 48,176 | 7 | 15 |
| 14 | South Euclid | 21,255 | 3 | 14 |
| 15 | Independence | 7,510 | 1 | 13 |
| 16 | Obetz | 7,542 | 1 | 13 |
| 17 | Akron | 188,223 | 24 | 13 |
| 18 | Sandusky | 23,981 | 3 | 13 |
| 19 | Columbus | 915,447 | 112 | 12 |
| 20 | Butler Township | 8,195 | 1 | 12 |
| 21 | Toledo | 263,668 | 32 | 12 |
| 22 | Goshen Township, Clermont County | 16,502 | 2 | 12 |
| 23 | Lancaster | 41,687 | 5 | 12 |
| 24 | North College Hill | 9,401 | 1 | 11 |
| 25 | Madison Township, Franklin County | 19,179 | 2 | 10 |
| 26 | Richmond Heights | 10,509 | 1 | 10 |
| 27 | London | 10,623 | 1 | 9 |
| 28 | Bedford Heights | 10,723 | 1 | 9 |
| 29 | Lebanon | 21,985 | 2 | 9 |
| 30 | Springdale | 11,096 | 1 | 9 |
| 31 | Reading | 11,118 | 1 | 9 |
| 32 | Blue Ash | 13,410 | 1 | 7 |
| 33 | Springfield Township, Summit County | 14,090 | 1 | 7 |
| 34 | Garfield Heights | 28,876 | 2 | 7 |
| 35 | Springfield | 57,911 | 4 | 7 |
| 36 | Olmsted Township | 14,535 | 1 | 7 |
| 37 | Cleveland Heights | 43,853 | 3 | 7 |
| 38 | Circleville | 14,623 | 1 | 7 |
| 39 | Fremont | 15,782 | 1 | 6 |
| 40 | Bay Village | 15,838 | 1 | 6 |
| 41 | Massillon | 32,569 | 2 | 6 |
| 42 | Stow | 33,791 | 2 | 6 |
| 43 | Steubenville | 18,037 | 1 | 6 |
| 44 | Niles | 18,202 | 1 | 5 |
| 45 | Springboro | 19,591 | 1 | 5 |
| 46 | Whitehall | 19,603 | 1 | 5 |
| 47 | Oregon | 19,639 | 1 | 5 |
| 48 | Forest Park | 19,730 | 1 | 5 |
| 49 | Findlay | 40,089 | 2 | 5 |
| 50 | Sidney | 20,230 | 1 | 5 |
| 51 | Painesville | 20,713 | 1 | 5 |
| 52 | Miami Township, Clermont County | 44,929 | 2 | 4 |
| 53 | Fairfield Township | 22,989 | 1 | 4 |
| 54 | Newark | 51,394 | 2 | 4 |
| 55 | Elyria | 53,263 | 2 | 4 |
| 56 | Miami Township, Montgomery County | 30,666 | 1 | 3 |
| 57 | Hamilton | 62,860 | 2 | 3 |
| 58 | North Olmsted | 31,532 | 1 | 3 |
| 59 | Lorain | 65,374 | 2 | 3 |
| 60 | Canton | 68,725 | 2 | 3 |
| 61 | Gahanna | 34,979 | 1 | 3 |
| 62 | Springfield Township, Hamilton County | 35,232 | 1 | 3 |
| 63 | Austintown | 35,491 | 1 | 3 |
| 64 | Boardman | 39,587 | 1 | 3 |
| 65 | Reynoldsburg | 41,277 | 1 | 2 |
| 66 | Delaware | 46,369 | 1 | 2 |
| 67 | Beavercreek | 47,389 | 1 | 2 |
| 68 | Colerain Township | 58,402 | 1 | 2 |
| 69 | Green Township | 59,412 | 1 | 2 |
| 70 | West Chester Township | 63,335 | 1 | 2 |
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Report. 70 Ohio cities that reported a murder.
Summary
Summary: The Places With The Most Murders In Ohio For 2026
If you’re looking at the places in Ohio with the most murders, and where residents have the highest chances of being killed themselves, this is an accurate list. Again, these statistics are an indication of where crimes occur, not a statement about the effectiveness of the law enforcement in the areas they serve.
The cities with the highest murder per capita in Ohio are Mount Healthy, East Cleveland, Cleveland, Dayton, Trotwood, Cincinnati, Uhrichsville, Youngstown, Lima, and Portsmouth.
