Riddle didn't learn the
complete story of his birth until he tracked down and visited his uncle Morfin
Gaunt the summer after Myrtle died. In revenge for his father's
abandonment and Muggle blood, he went to the Riddle mansion in Little
Hangleton and murdered his father and grandparents. The Riddle's gardener,
Frank Bryce, later told police that on the day of the Riddle's deaths he had
seen a stranger; a teenage boy, dark-haired and pale, near the manor. The next
morning a maid found Tom Riddle Sr. and his elderly parents dead in their
drawing room, "still in their dinner things." The Riddles were as
cold as ice and each had a look of terror upon his or her face but had no sign
of physical injury. The Riddles were buried in the Little Hangleton churchyard.

This last year at
Hogwarts, Tom was Prefect, Head Boy, and received a Medal for Magical Merit.
Albus Dumbledore later said of him, "Brilliant. Of course, he was probably
the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen." Secretly however, Tom
was researching Horcruxes and had come to the conclusion that if one
Horcrux was good, seven would be better. He made his first two Horcruxes with
the murders of Myrtle and his father. He was only seventeen.

About this time, Albus
Dumbledore defeated the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in a
spectacular duel and became the only wizard that Riddle ever feared.