Voldemort killed personally?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 157153

Geoff wrote:
> There is also the question of whether he actually killed Quirrell.

Carol responds:
We know that Quirrell died when LV left his body--not exactly a
murder, but LV must have known that Quirrell wouldn't survive the
prolonged possession any more than the snakes and other beasts (aside
from nagini) did. I don't think it would count as a murder that split
his soul, however, or at least not one that he would consider worthy
of a Horcrux.
> 
Geoff: 
> Slightly OT, there seems to be some confusion about Dorcas Meadowes'
name. In my Bloomsbury volume, her surname is spelt with an 'e', 
elsewhere - including the Lexicon -it doesn't appear to be. Just out
of  sheer pedantry, I wonder which is correct.

Carol responds, with apologies for rearranging Geoff's post:
Even the American edition spells the name with an "e," so the Lexicon
is incorrect.

Geoff:
> Regarding moaning Myrtle, surely the Basilisk killed her, according
to her own testimony in COS. <snip>

Carol:
Nonetheless, I do consider it murder, as Diary!Tom himself does (see
below), just as it would be murder if he'd released a deadly snake
into a teacher's office knowing that the teacher was in there and the
snake had fatally bitten the teacher--or even more so, since the
Basilisk was under his command (see below). 

And Myrtle has no clear idea of what happened beyond hearing a boy's
voice speaking a "different language" and seeing a pair of "great,
big, yellow eyes" (Cos Am. ed. 299). She has no idea who the boy was
or what he said and consequently can't know that he's using the
Basilisk to kill her. Even though she's the victim, she doesn't know
what happened and is not a reliable witness as to whether it's murder
or, um, what else would you call it? An unfortunate accident? I think
not. That's like calling Cedric Diggory's death an accident.

Evidence that her death was murder:

Diary!Tom tells Harry, "It won't come till it's called" (308). IOW,
the Basilisk follows Diary!Tom's orders, as it followed Tom Riddle's
when he was a living boy. It doesn't act on its own and can't even
come out of the statue unless he releases it.

Diary!Tom tells Harry that Possessed!Ginny "set the Serpent of
Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib's cat" (310), and Ginny
herself writes in the diary, "I think I'm the one attacking everyone,
Tom!" (311). Again, the Basilisk doesn't act on its own. It attacks
when it's ordered to do so, when it's "set on" a victim by the Heir of
Slytherin (Tom) or the person he's possessing (Ginny).

Myrtle heard Tom talking to the Basilisk before it attacked her (299).
Clearly, he was "setting it on" her. What else would he have said to
it just before it attacked, especially since it doesn't attack unless
ordered to do so? Tom had just come up from the Chamber of Secrets
accompanied by the Basilisk with the intention of killing someone. No
other reason for bringing it into the school is plausible. He wasn't
just taking it for a stroll. And since Myrtle was crying (299), no
doubt sobbing as loudly as she does when she's a ghost, Tom would have
known she was in the stall and would be coming out at some point. He
must have told it to attack her when she came out. He wasn't making
idle conversation, and the Basilisk didn't say anything.

Tom tells Harry that he searched for years for the Chamber of Secrets
(312), which we know that Salazar Slytherin built so that "his own
true heir" could "unleash the horror within [the CoS] and use it to
purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic" (151)--use
it, IOW, as a murder weapon to kill Muggleborns. He also tells Harry
preserved the memory of his sixteen-year-old self in the diary with
the express intention of enabling someone else to finish "Salazar
Slytherin's noble work" when he could no longer release the Basilisk
himself without causing the school to be closed (312). 

So Tom's purpose in bringing the Basilisk with him on the day it
killed Myrtle must have been to kill Muggleborns. Since Myrtle is a
Muggleborn, it would have exactly suited his purpose to have the
Basilisk kill her. (Even if she wasn't a Muggleborn, it would still be
murder if he ordered the Basilisk to kill her for whatever reason. And
even if his words were something other than a direct order, he would
have known that she would die if the Basilisk looked her in the eyes.
The only way to be innocent of murder in such circumstances would be
to order it *not* to look at her, and clearly that is not what happened.)

Diary!Tom seems to regard her death as a murder. He tells Harry that
"killing Muggleborns doesn't matter to me any more" (312), which means
that his original intention (before he created the diary) was indeed
to rid the school of Muggleborns by using the Basilisk to kill them,
after which he created the diary so he could use someone else to
control the Basilisk, without which no Muggleborns could or would be
murdered. Until his focus transferred to Harry, *Diary!Tom's*
intention was also to kill Muggleborns using the Basilisk--as he tells
Harry and as indicated by "Enemies of the Heir, Beware" (138). The
chamber didn't open itself or the Basilisk release itself. Tom (and
later Diary!Tom, via Ginny) did both, with the express intention of
ridding the school of Muggleborns as Salazar Slytherin intended. 

Diary!Tom twice orders the Basilisk to kill Harry (318 and 319), and
only fails in his intention because Fawkes blinds the Basilisk and
provides Harry with the Sword of Gryffindor. Surely if Diary!Tom had
been a real person and had successfully ordered the Basilisk to kill
Harry, Harry's death would be murder. If so, Myrtle's in similar
circumstances is also murder if Tom ordered it to kill her (and
manslaughter at the least if he didn't). Again, I can conceive of no
other intention for bringing the Basilisk into the school than to use
it to kill people he, as Slytherin's Heir, considered to be enemies or
unworthy to attend the school, including little "Mudbloods" like Myrtle.

Surely, Geoff, you don't think that Tom Riddle is innocent of Myrtle's
death and it was all the Basilisk's fault? True, it's a bloodthirsty
and murderous beast, classified as XXXXX by the MoM bcause it's so
deadly, but who released it? Why was it released, if not to kill
people? Whose command was it under? Who was with it and spoke to it
before it killed Myrtle? Who "set it on" her, to use Diary!Tom's own
phrase? 

Was it just an accident for which sixteen-year-old Tom, that nice boy
who never hurt anyone, wasn't responsible? I think not, any more than
Diary!Tom innocent of petrifying the students in CoS. The Basilisk did
it, yes, but only because Ginny, under Diary!Tom's control, "set it on
them." It obeys the Heir of Slytherin and does his will. It's as much
 Tom's instrument as his wand, and even more deadly because its only
purpose, and only desire, is to kill.

If, as seems likely from the evidence, Tom ordered the Basilisk to
kill Myrtle when she came out, it was indeed murder. The only
difference between this murders and those he committed later was that
he used the Basilisk rather than his wand as the murder instrument.

On a side note, I believe, but can't prove my hypothesis, that Tom
used Myrtle's murder--his first--to create his first Horcrux. She was
his first victim and would have been important to him for that reason,
and her death was symbolically connected to the diary (and perhaps
recorded in it as one of the memories that Tom didn't choose for Harry
to see). Her death was also the *reason* he needed the diary since the
school would be closed if any other deaths occurred. so it makes sense
that he would use Myrtle's death for the diary Horcrux, just as it
makes sense to use his father's death for the ring Horcrux (using the
death of his Muggle father to empower a memento from his mother's side
of the family, rather like using the "bone" of that same father to
restore his body much later).

Carol, certain that Tom himself regarded Myrtle's death as a murder
and that having killed her made it easier to murder his family a few
months later