I'm just speculating because Ppruners love that sh$t, but perhaps theres a translation, or language issue about the radios and they really meant the ELT signal.
If you're dead, you sure aren't going to dial up the tower frequency and let them know you crashed, working radios or not, and if the crash was bad enough, the ELT isn't going to function well either. I'm glad that cell phone technology can help in some cases, but it's not ideal.
Sorry about the loss of life, it's always tragic.