Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Discussion, analysis, and exotic opinions surrounding fandoms like Twilight, Star Wars, Harry Potter, the MCU, and far too many animes.
[00:00] Vinelle: Welcome to the newest episode of Rain Heresy. Today we are going to be following a recent trend of investigating murders within the Harry Potter canon that nobody fought to investigate. Today it's going to be the Riddle murders, where we suggest that Tom Riddle, aka Voldemort, did not murder his father and grandparents.
[00:22] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, and the reason we're dropping the spoiler so early is at this point we are two of these in I believe, or something to that effect. And so far the punchline has been Tom Riddle has committed a surprising few amount of murders.
[00:38] Vinelle: We're going to end up at the end of this podcast series with how did the man have so many?
[00:44] The Carnivorous Muffin: I mean, I can only assume that Albania is lined with the corpses of his victims.
[00:52] Vinelle: Yeah, must have gone nuts down nuts in Albania. Yeah, just let out his hair completely. All right.
[00:59] The Carnivorous Muffin: Anyway, so here's what we know. Tom confesses to the murder of his father and his paternal family. He does this several times. He makes no bones about it, and if anyone asks, he tells them he murdered them. We also have Dumbledore showing Harry a memory in which Morphin had met Tom Riddle just before the murders had occurred. They had a discussion in which Morphin realized that Tom was Morophe's illegitimate child with Tom Riddle senior. And they don't really get much far past that point. And then Dumbledore says some things we'll get into, but what's very important to keep in mind is what we see in the memory versus what Dumbledore hypothesizes. Those are two very different things. And Dumbledore says a lot of words that we see no evidence of ever afterwards. After that memory, the riddles were murdered, presumed by morphin. It's with his wand. He easily confesses and Tom gets the Gaunt ring which he took from morphin, which means we know he met with him and took it.
[02:03] Vinelle: It's worth noting with Damalore that he does this throughout the half blood prince. Whenever he is showing a memory to Harry or even just discussing Tom Riddle, he will admit that he is making things up. He's filling in the blanks. And while he has a lot of faith in his guesswork and we are clearly meant to take him at face value, JKR is not someone who wants you to remember that unreliable narrators exist. We go with the Watsonian approach, which is to doubt every character, and we find Dumbledore to be. He should be questioned. We should not take things at face value just because Damoldar said it. Especially not.
[02:37] The Carnivorous Muffin: Dumbledore says a lot of words. He likes words.
[02:40] Vinelle: I made a quote compilation on my blog at one point where I just put all the times during Halfler prints where he admits that he's just making things up about Tom Riddle. And it was very long and very flowery.
[02:53] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, very flowery. It's featured such words as, now, Harry, we enter the land of wild speculation.
[03:01] Vinelle: Actual quote.
[03:02] The Carnivorous Muffin: I love the land of wild speculation.
[03:05] Vinelle: Not an actual quote.
[03:06] The Carnivorous Muffin: Not a quote. Not a quote.
[03:10] Vinelle: But yes. So we have Tom Riddle arriving at the gaunt. Check where he meets morphing. This is undisputed. And morphing. Gaunt also, then at first mistakes him for being Tom Sr. His father. And this is interesting. I said, I'll get into it later, because I don't just get into it right away. No, but you see, the one bit of evidence that could possibly tie Tom to the Riddle murders is that the Muggle who was accused, Frank Price, the gardener, he had been working for the riddles, he says that he saw a young, roughly teenage, dark haired pale boy heading up towards Riddle Manor. That was his description. And yet he does not, in a murder investigation at a time where Britain had the capital punishment, he does not mention the similarity to the murder victim. That would be incredibly relevant. And he doesn't mention it. And in order for him to be close enough to tell how old Riddle was, his complexion, it seems very strange for him to not have done that. And that's what makes me think that it's possible he just said that he will know, young Darkhead type, probably a.
[04:24] The Carnivorous Muffin: Criminal, because it was very reminiscent of the South park episode where Butters is presumed to dead and his parents desperately have to cover up what they think is maybe it's very reminiscent. And they blame some Puerto Rican guy. And we meet all the people who their lives have been ruined by some Puerto Rican guy, including OJ Simpson.
[04:50] Vinelle: It's very reminiscent of every crime novel or fake explanation ever, where you say, oh, it wasn't me. It was that other guy, some dark.
[05:03] The Carnivorous Muffin: Haired, pale looking kid, very nondescript, who.
[05:08] Vinelle: Walked up to the house when he had. Again, he had clearly been close enough that he should have noticed that Tom looked exactly like the murder victim, so much so that at a distance, morphin Gaunt mistook him for Tom's senior. So I have questions for Mr. Price. Yes. So we then go on to the fact that when Riddle arrives in the IS, he looks around himself with an air of disappointment. He confirms in conversation with morphing that you are morphing like you are my uncle. He is there to find out. And he learns during that conversation about the riddles. The way that conversation is written, it does not in any way come across as Tom having known in advance about his father that his father lived just across the hill. He was not aware prior to this, which means that in order for him to have killed his father, it has to have been an impulse decision. That's possible. It's not impossible. We're not, in this video episode going to rule out that Tom killed his father. We're just going to pass it. That is likely very possible. He didn't. There is the matter of the trace, which prior to half Blood Prince and this particular conversation with Dumbledore, Harry, and we all believed, as well as pure blood children in canon, that the trace knows who is performing like, which miner is performing magic at every other point. That is how it's described. But during that conversation with Amador, we learn, no, no, the trace is only an alarm that goes off if there is magic used in the household of someone minor who is also Muggleborn like. It's a very interesting rewrite of the rules, but one that would then explain how Tom was able to do magic outside of school as a minor. And the problem that immediately comes up to me is how would he notice? And how would this man, who is so concerned with being careful, not only know this, but be so certain in his knowledge that he is willing to risk expulsion and use the very curse that will give him life sentence in Azkaban Streisova when he could wait a few months, or he could kill his father the Muggle way, or just any other way. That does not mean a life sentence and his life ruined.
[07:44] The Carnivorous Muffin: As an example, remember that Tom could, if he was going to risk magic and not the killing curse, he could light the house on fire, or he could do so the Muggle way in the middle of the night.
[07:57] Vinelle: He could operate in, shoot them, operate out, nobody. If the trace box as described, then he could operate it from someplace that's not the orphanage or whatever he was evacuated to, because I doubt he was still in the orphanage during the 1940s, during a certain war which did not go very well for the children in.
[08:20] The Carnivorous Muffin: London and, weirdly, made no appearance in the novels. Lack of discussion of World War II. But anyway, point being, this would be a very strange way for Tom to commit the murder and takes a very large risk on himself, which we see he absolutely does not want to take. And it could have been a crime of passion. He just does it and then he only thinks to use Morphin's wand instead of his own. And that's the only thing he thinks about. And then he's surrounded by dead bodies, but it's looking unlikely.
[09:02] Vinelle: And then you also have to factor in that he is able to create a memory in Morphin'scont of morphin committing these murders that is so convincing that the orders are completely fooled. Nobody thinks to question it and remember.
[09:18] The Carnivorous Muffin: Also, with the trace from what we saw of Harry the way it's described, he expects the cops to show up immediately. When he does, you know, when he blows up his aunt, he panics and leads because he expects them to expel him and arrest him right there. That is the world Tom has grown up with. And it's unlikely even if he's talking to other such. We don't see these incidents happen often. From what we see in Canon, Harry got in more trouble than most people do, so he wouldn't know that that's not the case. And if he thinks the wand just immediately alerts the orders, he will expect them to show up. He will not have time to fake the he.
[10:01] Vinelle: Well, even if he did have someone tell him that this is completely legit, Tom, you can totally use magic. He has to have a lot of trust in that person. That person to not be lying, to not be wrong, that the rules are not covering that in some way in order to risk his entire. Also, if you contrast all of this to Moorfin Gaunt, who we know is very violent, had a history of tormenting, specifically the riddle Muggles because of their connection with Merope, who on this day finds out that when your sister ran away, she had a kid with one of them. And now that Muggle who had that kid is living just a few, just walking distance away. I think it's incredibly plausible that morphine Gaunt just snapped and decided to kill them. That happens all the time out in the real world. It's called honor killings. And it also explains the obliviate, because if Tom is, he's so good that he can rewrite your memory. So you think you have committed murders, but somehow the old memory is still under there. And I don't think that's how the human brain works. Even if Harry Potter has some very interesting thoughts on how memories in general work, I think every psychologist would disagree with it. Morphine Gant obliviating himself for the memory of killing the Mongols, being completely stoned. And then he oblivates from himself the knowledge that his sister and family line was tanged in this way. So he doesn't have to know about Tom Riddle's existence. That's just peachy. I mean, he was reported to be pleased with himself when the Auris arrived. Like he had done it. He had fixed his sister's repetition. And also, now he didn't even know. For a lunatic who is living in a shack in a woods has nothing left to live for. No, but it's an unlivable, condemnable house.
[12:01] The Carnivorous Muffin: Oh, I know. He lives a miserable life.
[12:03] Vinelle: And then he generally arise in his living standards when he gets to Azkaban. Holy ****, I have a roof. Now. Look at me. I have four walls.
[12:13] The Carnivorous Muffin: So to get back to what we stated, we do know Tom easily confesses to this. The thing is, in every instance Tom says this, he absolutely has reason to lie.
[12:26] Vinelle: He is not someone who's running on a platform of I really care about Muggle life and also my Muggle background is nothing to be ashamed of.
[12:34] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, so he has to justify being half blood and he has to reveal that he's half blood by the goblet of fire because he has to resurrect himself with his father's bones in a Muggle graveyard with the last dang Riddle. Already Barty and Peter know that news is going to spread, whether he liked it or not.
[12:52] Vinelle: Probably had spread already.
[12:54] The Carnivorous Muffin: That probably already had spread. And Lucius has the diary of a Tom M. Riddle. Who the hell is that?
[13:01] Vinelle: And you have from his time in Hogwarts, there were tons of people who are the parents or aunts and uncles of his present day daffodils.
[13:11] The Carnivorous Muffin: So the point is, he has this pesky Muggle background he has to explain or justify. And the easy justification to these kinds of people is that he murdered them all. He killed all of them. He wiped his ancestral street clean. He got rid of the stain on his honor and his family, avenged his mother. And raw. Well done, Tom. It's very like Jesse Pinkman's adventures with the ATM machine where Wolfengunts over there with the ATM machine crushes the entire Riddle family underneath it. Tom's standing there and he chooses to let people believe that he pushed over the ATM machine.
[13:53] Vinelle: It's simply the vice PR move.
[13:56] The Carnivorous Muffin: The difference is that there's no Saul Goodman to say, oh, no, that was the methead lady.
[14:03] Vinelle: So with that, it's not impossible that Tom did it. It's like with Hepsworth Smith. Could be he did it. It's just that it would be very stupid. Very strange way for him to do it. If he is going to murder them, then I frankly, would much rather believe in him going home that day and then returning later with a fully foreign plan when that does not involve using the killing curse while he's a minor.
[14:31] The Carnivorous Muffin: Not to mention that Morphin absolutely has extreme motive to do it and to do it at that moment as a crime of passion after he has just learned that that Muggle over there impregnated his sister. And now the line is tainted.
[14:50] Vinelle: By all accounts, Tom overpowered him. What we see is that morphine lunches at Tom and that's where the memory sort of fades out, implying morphine lost consciousness about that time. So I'm imagining Tom would have overpowered him and taken the ring and left and Morphine is waking up in his hovel. No ring. Merritt got a locket. She also got the ******* half blood kid. What the hell is that? That ring was one last thing he had going for him. That and the lineage. Now one is gone, the other is tainted.
[15:27] The Carnivorous Muffin: It's the end of a very artistic Russian novel about poverty and alcoholism. That is the end of Orphan Dog story.
[15:38] Vinelle: And you have Voldemort a few decades later looking back at the family tree. Got it justified somehow. And wait a minute, my uncle did murder my father. What a windfall. And he can just, if anybody does the research and is able to track Danette. Actually it was your uncle that went to prison. He can just say, oh yes, my darling Uncle Morphin. Yeah, yeah, I broke him out of Azkaban. He died in Rio.
[16:01] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yes, he died in Rio. That too is the end of a Russian novel in the afterwards where after our protagonist is long dead in the gutter of syphilis after having murdered his neighbors who are richer than he is, his somehow better off acquaintance friend claims his handiwork for his own ridiculous campaign. Yes, it's a beautiful story. But before we forget to talk about it, there is the matter of Dumbledore. We talk about it.
[16:39] Vinelle: Yeah, he is. During the pensive lessons building towards Harry. You need to kill yourself in order to destroy Tom Riddle. We also have our own thoughts on Domado's own state of mind regarding Tom Riddle. He doesn't seem able to regard Tom objectively at all. From the moment Tom is even eleven, there is an uncharitability in how he reads Tom's every action and every motive that not only is bizarre and frankly unwarranted based on what we see in the memories and what Dumbledore himself describes, but also his own frankly very real agenda in those meetings that he was never going to give Harry a fair version of Tom's life. He was never going to give the yes, he might have murdered him, but I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say maybe he didn't. But the thing is, Dumbledore, that he is probably worth an episode of his own. So in order to cut it short, I think maybe we can leave it at that. Muffin?
[17:46] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, I think we have covered the he has his reasons to pick the memories he does, which the ones he picks are bizarre for what he wants. But okay, Dumbledore. And he has a very good reason to present them the way he does. And even barring all that, there's an episode on Dumbledore to happen because the man is insane. He really is can of worms, that man.
[18:10] Vinelle: And this is coming from someone fun story from my high school experience once there was this one kid who held a presentation about his favorite topic, which was Dumbledore was totally evil guys. And mostly because I was contrary and also because I had not. Well, I just thought it was another edge lord. So I fiercely defended Dumbledore.
[18:35] The Carnivorous Muffin: How do you feel? In retrospect, I owe him an apology.
[18:40] Vinelle: Because that's the thing. I was not always like this. I used to think that if you are so super suspicious of Dumbledore and assigning him all kinds of manipulative motives, then you got to relax. Consider the man was in difficult position, he had a war to win, blah blah blah blah blah. What was the man supposed to do? And Akamara completed the other way. He actively made it worse for everyone involved and well, also just doesn't seem to like kids.
[19:13] The Carnivorous Muffin: Putting it mildly and lightly and not getting into.
[19:17] Vinelle: I don't know why he chose to work at children. He seems to really hate them.
[19:21] The Carnivorous Muffin: Power. Anyway, this is not the Dumbledore episode. We're going to stop here.
[19:26] Vinelle: Yes, we are.
[19:27] The Carnivorous Muffin: All right, so let's go into the devil's advocate. If Tom did it, how it.
[19:36] Vinelle: I thought we already sort of did the Tom's advocate in that I tried to be the devil's advocate and cut myself off a few sentences in because.
[19:47] The Carnivorous Muffin: It'S about where we what has to.
[19:48] Vinelle: Happen here is that Tom goes to see Morphin Gaunt, finds out oh my God, my father is right over that hill. Okay, I'm going to kill him. And to that end, he overpowers morphin, steals his ring, which by the way, ties into the crime scene, takes his wand, goes to the riddle manor, kills them all, runs back, she gives back the sprints back.
[20:13] The Carnivorous Muffin: No boy has sprinted as fast this time, Riddle.
[20:17] Vinelle: And somehow that's also another interesting thing. Nobody sees him. You would think on the day of the murder people would have noticed the fact that there was a Tom Riddle 2.0 walking around because they were identical. In a small English village. That would be the height of concept. And it was the middle of day and Frank was able to see him walking up the garden. Why did nobody else see Tom walking from one end of the village to. I just. There's a total lack of witnesses able to place Tom having gone to and fro when his appearance would have garnered notice. That has me devious. You could say he disillusioned himself. Of course. But then why is Frank seeing a young man walking up to the house make it make sense? But anyway, he returns and is able to flawlessly install the memories of a triple homicide in an adult's mind. And then he titles after the orphanage having been so certain of the traits working the way it does that he risked spending the rest of his life in Azkaban.
[21:30] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, and added to this is that the memory Dumbledore shows us is weird. It is just this first meeting with Morphin. It is extremely short. They barely get two words into each other and then it's cut off. There is nothing else. There is no hint of any plan or a second meeting where he installs the memory. And the thing is, Dumbledore is doing his best to convince Harry that this is what happened and this is the only memory he has to show for it. Which shows nothing at all. It's possible, but I'm highly doubtful. And looking back at it, I don't think he did it.
[22:08] Vinelle: I don't either.
[22:10] The Carnivorous Muffin: But if it makes listeners feel better, he definitely killed charity Burbage. And he probably killed James and Lily Potter. That one seems know we don't have any witnesses who were there aside from a baby.
[22:25] Vinelle: And Tom's own recollection that we see in that too. Yeah, we have that. But the thing is, I'm willing to even question that one because it seems to me like a kind of reconstructed memory. We're currently doing a reread. Anyone wanting to join our discord server and follow on the Daffly Hallows reread, welcome to do so. We'll eventually get to that memory and we'll see what we think.
[22:54] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, we'll see what we think. But point being, he killed somebody. We're not saying the man killed no people ever. It's just that he doesn't seem to be killing these people.
[23:05] Vinelle: Nope. Really doesn't yeah. Revisiting Harry Potter as an adult is a fun pastime, is what I think I will say. Lord Waldmore actually did nothing wrong. And I'm actually making a podcast episode about.
[23:21] The Carnivorous Muffin: Oh, I don't want to say that because that's not true. It's just.
[23:25] Vinelle: He did less wrong.
[23:26] The Carnivorous Muffin: He did less wrong. And all the things we keep pointing out he did wrong, I'm not sure he did them. And we point out other things he did. I will feel better if we do.
[23:38] Vinelle: Well, he created a Hawkrux. And that Hawkrux, definitely the dire Hawkrux. We also have our doubts about some of those other Hawkruxes actually being Hawkruxes. But that's for another episode. And, you know, Muffin, I think we're going to end this episode. Yeah, I think we got to go. Run.
[23:56] The Carnivorous Muffin: Run.
[23:57] Vinelle: Yeah.
[23:57] The Carnivorous Muffin: No, wait. Kill someone with Targram so that someone gets murdered by the correct people.
[24:04] Vinelle: Yeah. Today's murder victim is Strange harbor, aka.
[24:12] The Carnivorous Muffin: So sad. Well, at least you know who you were murdered by. And Tom Riddle didn't kill you, either. But that's okay.
[24:21] Vinelle: But you have that in common with a lot of people, as it turns out.
[24:23] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, a lot of people. Turns out it's not been killed by Tom Riddle. We have Dumbledore murdering somebody we didn't think he murdered, and Tom Riddle not murdering. Now four people we thought he murdered.
[24:38] Vinelle: We are clearing Tommyla's name one person at a time. Well. Oh, I'll also. No, no. You know what? I'm not going to go there. Let us just leave. And in case you don't see each other again, dear reader, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.