In the mid-1990s, Karl Childers is an intellectually disabled Arkansas man who has been in the custody of the state mental hospital since the age of 12; at that age, he murdered his mother and her lover. Although thoroughly institutionalized, Karl is deemed fit to be released into the outside world. Prior to his release, he is interviewed by a local college newspaper reporter, and he recounts committing the murders with a kaiser blade, saying, "Some folks call it a sling blade. I call it a kaiser blade." Karl explains that he attended school with the teenage son of his father's boss, Jesse Dixon, who was a mean-spirited bully and pervert; he thought that Jesse was raping his mother and decapitated him. When he discovered that his mother was a willing participant in the affair, he killed her also.