The Riddles' Murders (WAS: The only one he ever feared?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 117523


Katrina wrote:
> > > 
> > > > <snip> What LV fears about DD is what he knows.  I've heard it 
> > > postulated that when TR dropped "off the radar screen" after he 
> > > finished at Hogwarts, it was because of the triple AK murder in 
Debbie wrote:
> > 
> > I don't believe that Tom Riddle disappeared *because* he was
fleeing the scene of his parents' murders.  Rather, he decided to
leave to seek out what Dumbledore calls "the very worst of our kind"
who could instruct him in the Dark Arts, but before he left he stopped 
off in Little Hangleton for the revenge murder of his parents.  
> > ...edited...
> 
> bboyminn responded:
> 
> Unless I read it wrong, I think Tom murdered his parents in the
summer between his 6th and 7th year at Hogwarts. Since he came back to
> school, it doesn't seem like anyone made any connnection to Tom and
> the death of the Riddles.
> 
> Once he graduated, he sought out the Dark Arts as a source of power
> that other, weaker, people were unwilling to tap.<snip> I think Tom
was in the process of transforming himself into Voldemort, the
self-proclaimed most power wizard in the world, champion of the
pureblood cause, and the next supreme evil overlord of
> the universe. A wizard so powerful and ruthless that all would fear
to speak his name.
> 
> I often wondered if Tom collected the inheritance on his parents
> estate, and used that money to finance his transformation?
> 
Carol responds:
You're right that the murder was committed about a year before he left
to seek out Dark wizards though my impression is that he was pursuing
immortality through transformations rather than seeking power or
championing the pureblood cause.

The Muggles didn't know about him (only Frank Bryce saw him leaving
the scene of the crime and no one believed him). I very much doubt
that he collected his inheritance or he would immediately have aroused
his suspicions: he benefited from the crime, so he would automatically
be a suspect, and he fit the description of the mysterious teenage boy.

Dumbledore says that he knew about the crime because he reads the
Muggle newspapers, but no one else in the WW was apparently aware of
it. Why Dumbledore didn't report his suspicions to the authorities, I
don't know. Certainly a Prioir Incantatem on Tom's wand would have
shown three AKs and proved him guilty. Possibly DD thought the MoM
would concern itself with the deaths of three Muggles. Also I don't
think that area was monitored; Tom's mother, the only witch we know of
in the area, was long dead, and Tom himself had lived in an orphanage,
quite possibly in London and certainly not in Little Hangleton because
no one there knew of his existence (his father had evidently placed
him somewhere out of sight, out of mind). From what we've seen, the
MoM mostly monitors underage wizards in Muggle areas and even that
practice seems to be recent; Lily Potter was evidently able to
transfigure rats into teacups without getting into trouble, and Tom's
youth was long before hers. I agree with Steve that the security
around Privet Drive is particularly acute; nothing of the sort would
have been needed in Little Hangleton in 1944 or thereabouts. Also the
MoM's security, when it *is* in place, can apparently determine what
kind of spell was performed (e.g., a hover charm at 4 Privet Drive in
CoS). Surely if Little Hangleton were under the MoM's radar,
they would have detected three Avada Kedavras, and since the dead
Muggles were Tom Riddle's parents, he would have been the immediate
and only suspect?

I think he committed the murders, suspected by nobody (except Frank
Bryce and Dumbledore), returned to school, and left on his quest for
Transformation without a knut to his name, quite possibly leaving
everything but his wand and the clothes on his back to one of the
friends who already called him Lord Voldemort, the future father of
Lucius Malfoy, who had in his keeping Tom's school diary and perhaps a
few other artifacts that he passed down to his son.
 
Carol, challenging anyone to come up with a longer sentence than her
last one