My brother is best friends with a retired mission control center technician (he monitored telemetry data -streams of numbers, not visuals - but they are all in the same room and they all talk). The media almost immediately quashed the early reports about the bodies and "corrected" it to small "debris" streams. There was already more than enough grief about the disaster, and I guess some higher-ups justifiably figured it was a matter of privacy and dignity for the deceased astronauts' families, and respect for the dead, to put a stop to a very extreme piece of TMI.
Understand, that the seat eject system was not designed to save lives - that is impossible when a Saturn 5 plus two boosters fails at high altitude and acceleration; it's not like the astronauts have a fighter pilot's parachute on their seats or suits. Because of the blown cabin roof and seat ejections, some few body parts were recoverable. The launch was aimed outward over the Atlantic, as they all are, so most partial remains that did not completely immolate and disintegrate on the way down sunk into the water and were not recovered. There were no monitored screams from the astronauts mics - they died instantly from the massive concussive shock force of the blasts.
Spuki, what you are recalling maybe are reports about STS Columbia when it broke up on re-entry.