Reporters on the Shropshire Star have been putting in the hours to keep up-to-date with one of the biggest crimes to hit the county in years.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning firefighters were called to a large-scale mansion fire, near Oswestry, which was quickly identified as arson.

What has emerged since has captivated the country’s attention and seen Star reporters camped side-by-side with the national media at the police cordon.

So far three bodies have been found at Osbaston House where business man Christopher Foster lives with his wife Jill and 15-year-old daughter Kirstie.

Police have launched a murder investigation after identifying one of the bodies as Jill, saying she was killed by a shot gun wound to the head.

A second body was identified as Christopher yesterday afternoon while police have yet to formally identify the third body although they said they believe it is Kirstie.

Crime correspondent Kirsty Smallman told HoldtheFrontPage: “We’ve had a reporters and photographers at the scene from morning until night.

“We’ve had another one in the community speaking to local people while I have been co-ordinating things from Telford.

“Every time there’s been an up-date we’ve been getting reaction from friends, and also looking at (social networking site) Bebo where Kirstie’s friends have been placing comments on her profile page.”

The Shropshire Star has several editions covering the entire county and Mid Wales.

The family has wide-reaching connections meaning the story has been placed on the front and prominent inside pages of all editions.

Kirsty added: “We had a double page spread with 15 pictures yesterday rounding up the story so far.

“Sunday was the busiest day as that’s when they found the third body.

“Reporters offered to come in and I was in the office from first thing till 1am Monday morning. It’s been a collective huge team effort.”

Meanwhile, a north Shropshire-based weekly has been keeping its readers up-to-date online.

With the fire breaking out just after the Oswestry and Border Counties Advertizer went to press last Monday, staff knew it would be almost a week before they could get the story out in print.

Instead, they used bordercountiesadvertizer.co.uk to keep readers abreast of developments.

The Advertizer had rolling news coverage of the investigation with transcripts of police statements which would not be going in the paper.

It also used photo-sharing website flickr.com to create a slideshow of pictures from inside the grounds of the mansion.

Website editor Mark Hooson said they were one of the first websites to get the photos online because the office was so close to Osbaston House.

He added: “It was a good week for visitor numbers, with web users obviously searching for Oswestry news and using Google alerts.

“As a weekly, if we didn’t have the website we wouldn’t have been able to let our readers know anything about the arson and murders until a week later, so it really came into its own last week.”