Bubba, Buster, Paw-Paw - who's who in Murdaugh murder trial

In the southernmost corner of South Carolina, a balmy, rural stretch known as the Lowcountry, the Murdaugh family enjoyed rarefied space - masters of the privileged and powerful class that controlled the area.

But two years ago that life unravelled when Alex Murdaugh - the fourth generation scion of a local legal dynasty - called police to report his wife Maggie and son Paul had been shot on the grounds of their family estate. He is now on trial for their murders.

Mr Murdaugh's case, a tale of death, deception and drugs, has become one of the most closely watched in the country.

Here's a look at the main characters of this story, now a family torn apart.

The central figure in this saga is a wealthy plaintiff's lawyer who worked at the private litigation firm founded by his great-grandfather.

Colleagues have said the 52-year-old was a loud and frenetic presence, always late and always in a rush, keeping different hours from the rest of the attorneys.

And in keeping with the family tradition, Mr Murdaugh was a powerhouse in the local legal circuit, winning his clients lucrative settlements which fed his affluent lifestyle.

But the patina of success hid a number of seedy secrets - Mr Murdaugh was stealing from his clients and colleagues, as much as $3.7m (£3m) in a single year alone. Testifying at his murder trial, he confessed to the theft, blaming a desperate and expensive addiction to painkillers.

"I'm not quite sure how I let myself get where I got," he said at trial.

If convicted, Mr Murdaugh faces life behind bars for both the murders of Maggie and Paul and for nearly 100 additional financial charges.

The matriarch of the Murdaugh family grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, before moving to South Carolina for university, where she met her husband, Alex.

Friends and family testified at Mr Murdaugh's trial that before her death in 2021, aged 52, Maggie Murdaugh was sweet and relaxed.

A full-time homemaker, she was an adoring mother to her two sons, her sister Marian Proctor said at trial: "Buster and Paul were her world."

Mrs Murdaugh was a "girl's girl", her family said, not naturally predisposed to the activities favoured by her husband and sons - hunting and fishing - but she was said to have jumped right in.

"She just wanted to do what they were doing," Mrs Proctor said.

"Paw Paw", as his father called him on the stand, was the youngest of Maggie and Alex's two sons.

At the time of his death, he was an undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina.

Family and friends described Paul, 22, as inquisitive and kind, taking particular care with his elderly grandparents.

"He was one hundred percent country boy, he was tough… but he took care of so many," his father said at the trial.

But there were some very troubling moments in Paul's short life.

At the time of his death, he was facing three charges all related to a 2019 boat wreck, including a very serious accusation that he was driving under the influence during the crash, which killed a 19-year-old called Mallory Beach. 

Paul pleaded not guilty but died before he could face trial.

All of the survivors except for Paul would testify that it had been him behind the wheel at the time of impact. He had been drunk, they said, descending into a cruel and angry alter-ego that friends had nick-named "Timmy", and who allegedly hit his girlfriend the night of the accident.

The 26-year-old is the eldest son of Maggie and Alex.

He graduated from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and had plans to follow his father into the family firm, in what would have been the fifth generation of Murdaugh men.

He has been a constant presence at his father's trial, sitting quietly just a few rows behind Mr Murdaugh for all six weeks of it. But he briefly found himself in hot water after reportedly passing his father a John Grisham novel, which was later deemed contraband.

Buster testified in his father's defence, describing Mr Murdaugh as a loving presence who was "destroyed" by the murders of Maggie and Paul.

He features in a particularly bizarre part of the Murdaugh family saga.

Mr Smith, a handyman and former logger, frequently did odd jobs for his distant cousin, Alex Murdaugh. But the strangest request came in September 2021, three months after Maggie and Paul's murders, when Mr Murdaugh asked Mr Smith to meet him on the side of a rural road one Saturday, and shoot him in the back of the head.

What happened next depends on who you ask - Mr Murdaugh or Mr Smith - but both agreed the scheme was originally cooked up by Mr Murdaugh who wanted to make his death look like a murder, so that his surviving son Buster might be able to collect on his life insurance policy.

Both have been charged in the botched scheme.

Mr Smith was initially out on bond, until Judge Clifton Newman (the judge in Mr Murdaugh's murder case) ordered him back to jail, saying he had broken the conditions of his bond.

The 57-year-old worked as the Murdaugh family's housekeeper for more than 20 years, becoming a fixture in the family.

Ms Satterfield "spent more time with the Murdaughs than she probably did with her own kids", said Eric Bland, a lawyer who represented Ms Satterfield's sons.

In 2018, she died after falling on the front steps of the Murdaugh's home.

At her funeral, Mr Murdaugh approached her sons, Tony and Brian, and told them they should file a wrongful death suit against him, and that his home insurance would pay compensation.

Two of Mr Murdaugh's insurance policies paid out to a tune of $4.3m, but the Satterfields did not receive a dime. Alex Murdaugh, as he admitted in court, had pocketed it.

Last year, after Mr Murdaugh's arrest, South Carolina law enforcement announced they would exhume Ms Satterfield's body. No new findings or arrests have yet been announced.

The Murdaugh's golden retriever has had several mentions at Alex Murdaugh's murder trial, described as stubborn and as a favourite of Maggie's.

But he's also played a fairly significant role in the prosecution's case.

A mobile phone video taken at the Murdaugh's dog kennels by Paul about five minutes before prosecutors say the killings took place features the voice of Mr Murdaugh talking to Bubba. The video contradicted Mr Murdagh's claims that he had not joined his family at the kennels that night, but had stayed home to nap. Mr Murdaugh admitted on the stand he had lied.

Bubba is now living with Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson, a former employee of the Murdaugh family.