 Plagued by recurring nightmares noted to her childhood, Christine Penmark questions her father, a former crime reporter named Richard Bravo, about them and learns that she is adopted. Her real mother (and her 8-year-old daughter Rhoda s real grandmother) was a woman named Bessie Denker, a vicious killer who was executed for slaughtering her entire family for fun and profit. When an elderly neighbor promises to leave Rhoda a valuable trinket after she dies, she opts to step up the process and shoves the old lady down the stairs, claiming afterward that the death was an accident, which, of course, everyone believes, as Rhoda is "just a child." When a schoolmate wins a penmanship medal that Rhoda felt she should have won, she drowns him at a school picnic and confiscates the medal for herself. And when handyman to her apartment complex begins to catch on to her, she locks him in his room, sets fire to it, and burns him alive. Rhoda s mother also catches on, but as it was she who gave birth to the child and therefore passed on "the bad seed," she accepts the blame herself.