Tom Riddle - Riddle murders

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 106108

Wanda wrote:
The underage magic thing had occurred to me, too - they [the Riddles]
were killed in the summer, so wouldn't 3 AKs by an underaged wizard
outside of school have been noticed by the MoM?  <snip>
> 
Batchevra responded:
Not to excuse Tom Riddle Jr., but we don't know when the laws were
enacted that underage wizards couldn't use magic out of school. If the
laws  weren't in place, then technically he wasn't breaking any law,
except the ones about murder. Just a thought.

Carol adds:
And even if the laws against underage magic were enacted at that time,
I don't think that the Riddle House would have been monitored. The MoM
would have assumed that Tom was in the orphanage. Tom was remarkably
lucky, too, that most wizards in the MoM don't read Muggle newspapers
and would have been unaware that three Muggles *named Riddle* had been
murdered. (I wonder if Dumbledore knew and suspected that Tom had done
it but had no way to prove it.) 

But the incident happened the summer before Tom returned to Hogwarts
as Head Boy, so he could quite easily have been seventeen already--a
fully qualified wizard who had passed his O.W.L.s and had his
apparating license. No one would have been watching him.

A more important question to me is how Tom got away without being
suspected as the murderer by the Muggle authorities. Unless he was
disinherited, he'd have been heir to the estate, and if he was
disinherited, he'd have a motive (revenge). Also, the Muggle gardener,
Frank Bryce, claimed to have seen a pale, dark-haired teenage boy near
the house on that day (GoF Am. ed. 3). If the Muggle authorities knew
that Riddle Sr. had a (disowned) son and knew where he lived, why
didn't they suspect him and come after him? Instead, the police are
sure that Frank invented the boy (GoF 3). 

Why has no one in Little Hangleton, including the authorities, ever
heard of Tom Jr.? I'm guessing, for one thing, that the orphanage
where Tom had previously stayed was a long way from Little Hangleton.
But evidently Tom's existence had also been hushed up. The marriage
itself may not have been a secret, but Tom Sr. would have washed his
hands of his wife through a divorce or dissolution (what's the word
for a marriage that's wiped from the record as if it never existed?)
and arranged for the baby to be born far away. I know it's been argued
that the orphanage must have been in Little Hangleton because Mrs.
Riddle was a local girl, but how could Tom have been a "stranger" (GoF
3) and not the logical suspect if that were the case?

As far as I can see, Tom (now seventeen and unwatched) must have
apparated to Little Hangleton, killed his family, run into the
shadows, apparated back to wherever he was living with no one the
wiser, and coolly returned to school as Head Boy the next fall.

Now that, my dear list mates, is evil.

Carol