It doesn't seem too egregious an error to assume "death recorded" means they were executed, rather than the opposite where death was recorded as the verdict but

It doesn't seem too egregious an error to assume "death recorded" means they were executed, rather than the opposite where death was recorded as the verdict but not actually executed. Not checking newspaper reports of the period is lazy though and exactly the kind of thing I'd expect a journalist to do and therefore be the one to discover the flaw.