If Someone Is Killed and the Officials Refuse to Investigate, Is It Still Murder?

One week prior to Christmas, in a small, Southern town, a fine Christian lady was murdered in her home as she cooked lunch. It was such a shocking occurrence that the entire town of relatives, friends and neighbors went into Silence Mode, and instructed the daughter to also, and to just go on with her life.
However, as she succumbed to emotional regression, she entered college classes for therapy, and sought out private investigators since all officials refused to do their normal jobs after the murder of her mother. She desperately longed to know who and why? And, why the town's reluctance to respond appropriately?
Upon the court-granted exhumation, vital witnesses were discovered who held pertinent information, which revealed the guilty party. However, the governor, local police, and even state police only reluctantly conducted their levels of inquiry by interviewing the suspect himself, and accepting his account that a 'now-deceased individual' had actually killed her.
Those officials who made the efforts of covering-up a 'blatant murder,' had their own reasons for agreeing that, "This town - state just can't handle a scandal like this. We gotta say she done it herself."
Fortunately, these exact words were overheard by the highly credible witnesses who surfaced two decades later, unaware that the victim's daughter did not know about their presence.
During the decades of her efforts, she experienced emotional regression, and found therapeutic assistance via the book Massive Psychic Trauma (H.Krystal) gleaned from Survivors of Jewish Holocaust. She now travels to Israel regularly and works with other victims (including many military) of PTSD.