Rhoda Penmark

Rhoda Penmark is a fictional character in William March's 1954 novel The Bad Seed and the stage play adapted from it by Maxwell Anderson. She was portrayed by Patty McCormack in the 1956 film adaptation and by Carrie Wells in the 1985 made for TV remake where her name was changed from Rhoda, to "Rachel".

Rhoda Penmark is an eight-year-old girl who is charming, polite and intelligent beyond her years. Beneath her lovable facade, however, she is a sociopath who is willing to harm and even kill to get what she wants, when she wants. She is also a precociously talented con artist, adept at wrapping adults around her little finger. Her tricks do not work on other children, who can sense her true nature and avoid her. In the beginning of the novel, she brutally murders a classmate and a groundskeeper who suspects her. It is also revealed that she murdered an elderly neighbor and her pet dog a few years before.

March writes that Rhoda's evil is genetic: her maternal grandmother, "the incomparable Bessie Denker", was an infamous serial killer who also began killing at Rhoda's age. Rhoda's mother, Christine, was adopted at a very young age and so she doesn't remember her real parents.

While at a school picnic, Rhoda mercilessly drowns her classmate, Claude Daigle, who won a special penmanship award that she feels she deserved more. After beating him to death with her tap shoes she retrieves the medal and leaves the dead boy's body in a local lake. While no one initially suspects Rhoda at first, Christine notices that her daughter seems startlingly indifferent and untroubled by the other child's tragic death. Christine, who has always vaguely sensed something wrong with her daughter, is troubled, but dismisses any possibility that Rhoda was actually involved in the boy's death.

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