At Dooley’s Bait shop in Lexington, South Carolina, the talk around the worm bins and minnow tanks was dominated by one subject: Dylann Roof, a previously unremarkable local young man now accused of one of most shocking murders in state history.

An intense manhunt is under way for a young white man who joined a prayer meeting and then opened fire inside a church, killing nine people.

A man accused of killing his five children was an ex-convict whose homes were visited by social workers a dozen times in the past three years.

The decomposed bodies of five children aged between two and eight were found stuffed into rubbish bags near a logging road in Alabama after their father confessed to killing them and led police to the scene, authorities said.