In West Virginia in the 1930s, Reverend Harry Powell is a self-appointed preacher and misogynistic serial killer who travels along the Ohio River, justifying the women he murdered with his switchblade knife after marrying them for their money as doing God's work. After reaching a town sometime after his latest murder, Powell ends up being arrested for driving a stolen car and serves his sentence at Moundsville Penitentiary. By chance, Powell ends up sharing the same cell as Ben Harper, a local man who murdered two men in a bank robbery for ten thousand dollars. But with the police about to catch him, Harper makes his children John and Pearl promise to never reveal where the money is hidden after hiding it in Pearl's doll. Despite Powell's attempts to learn the money's location, Harper takes it to his grave.