Sent you a PM.
I am not naming candidates as I have found no really good matches.
The preliminary search criteria are:
"Any person who died unexpectedly between September 1 and October 11 who was also an active Delta Airlines pilot."
Multiple data sources are available, none of them are guaranteed complete, accurate or up-to-date. That is just the nature of this business. It's always a judgement call in the end.
So far I come up with people who were retired, or died after a long illness. They could not have been on the LAX run or any other flight as a Captain.
Not a very solid confirmation of the original story. Not a refutation either.