I've never done it before. To be honest I've always heard that it was impossible. But if I was really determined I would think that the first and primary source of info would be the police report. If it was totaled I would think in most cases there must be a police report. And I think police reports are public record, right? I don't even know if this is the legit site, but it came up on Google:
http://www.dmv.org/vehicle-history/why-run.php
In theory that wouldn't pull up the actual report, but hopefully at least the department that filed the report.
From there I would contact the department and see if I could get a copy of the actual report. Every accident I have been in with a police report has a diagram of the incident and the damage to the vehicle with a description of what happened. That's probably the best you can hope for from the DMV.
Beyond that I would think the next stop would be the insurance agency that paid the claim. Even if you could find the right one though, I'm not sure how forthcoming they would be with the info. I'm sure there are privacy concerns there.
After they are totaled they are normally auctioned. So maybe tracking down the auction house it was sold at could net some results? Again, privacy concerns.
If you were able to find the buyer though they might be willing to tell you the original damage. If they thought you were an angry customer probably not. There's probably no up-side possible in giving that info to anyone.
I'm not an expert on this by any means. I'm fairly decent at research though and I'm just listing the avenues that I would personally pursue if I was desperate.
I did own a totaled Samurai once a long time ago. There was absolutely nothing wrong that I could find with it. I briefly tried to find out what happened to it and quickly realized that it was more trouble than it was worth, being a running, driving vehicle with no obvious damage whatsoever.