Newspaper archive for the area.
There is probably a university in the state that has an extensive collection of newspapers published in that state, often a paper copy of every edition published & at least a few copies of every newspaper known.
Find out which one & correspond. One or two librarians will oversee the collection & probably be delighted that someone is interested.
It's easy for you to check maps for appropriate years & know which towns are adjacent or nearby, to find those papers. Even towns we see as small had 2 or more competing newspapers, sometimes until the 1980's. The Kansas City Times became part of the Kansas City Star in 1990, for example.
Sometimes papers were published as a county-wide paper, too. Towns do change names as well.
Visit, and page through the papers closest to the crimes that interest you. You may notice a pattern in social columns or in factory/business lay offs for retooling or seasonal shut-downs, who knows?
Genealogists do this, looking for marriages, obituaries, school graduating classes, business ribbon-cuttings, county fair trophy winners, scraps of information about families....
Where are you looking, who are the deceased?
Best, Laughing
