Kurt Van Kampenhout, who runs a municipal youth center, is arrested and treated with vicious hostility by John, whose excessive anger spills over to abuse his team, after an unsubstantiated claim by Joke Prinsen (17) that he molested her. The whole community turns against Kurt, except the alderman who is his superior, even after his release for lack of proof and credible alibi. Joke's devoted brother Ulrich, who works in the family butchery, even utters death treats. Joke's mother is forced to admit she had an affair with Kurt. Shortly after, Kurt is brutally murdered. Joke and her mate Bernadette confess their charge was bogus.

After local singer David De Preter's Mexican Indian souvenir machete is found in a field and identified as murder weapon, he admits he found Kurt murdered, again drunk. Youth center barman Jeroen Pauwels is caught during a nightly attempt to steal his hidden diary, which contains enough dirt, mainly coded, to blackmail nearly all Grimbergen VIPS. Among them Kurt's boss, the alderman, Joke's cahoot Bernadette's father, whose family was never thoroughly investigated after the suspicious suicide of an in-living girl.