Acho que essas duas passagens melhor respondem à sua pergunta:
‘As [Tom Riddle] moved up the school, he gathered about him a group of dedicated friends; I call them that, for want of a better term, although as I have already indicated, Riddle undoubtedly felt no affection for any of them. This group had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish, gravitating towards a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty. In other words, they were the forerunners of the Death Eaters, and indeed some of them became the first Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts.
‘Rigidly controlled by Riddle, they were never detected in open wrong-doing, although their seven years at Hogwarts were marked by a number of nasty incidents to which they were never satisfactorily linked, the most serious of which was, of course, the opening of the Chamber of Secrets, which resulted in the death of a girl. As you know, Hagrid was wrongly accused of that crime.’
Half-Blood Prince - pages 338-339 - Bloomsbury - chapter 17, A Sluggish Memory
Isto sugere a possibilidade > de que os próprios Comensais da Morte estivessem envolvidos na abertura da Câmara Secreta de alguma maneira, seja ajudando Tom Riddle com pesquisa ou guardando a porta do banheiro das meninas enquanto ele Na verdade, abriu a câmara, por exemplo. Então eu acho que é justo extrapolar isso para sugerir que, sim, pelo menos alguns de seus associados Comensais da Morte sabiam que ele era o Herdeiro da Sonserina; Eu imaginaria que Tom Riddle teria se gabado seletivamente sobre esse fato para certos indivíduos.
Canon sugere que pelo menos alguns dos Comensais da Morte estavam envolvidos na abertura da Câmara Secreta, e a lenda da Câmara Secreta deixou claro que a única pessoa que seria capaz de abrir a Câmara seria o herdeiro da Câmara dos Segredos. Sonserina. Quando Tom Riddle realizou isso, os Comensais da Morte teriam que saber que Tom era o verdadeiro Herdeiro da Sonserina.‘I knew I was different,’ he whispered to his own quivering fingers. ‘I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something.’ -- Tom Riddle
Half-Blood Prince - page 254 - Bloomsbury - chapter 13, The Secret Riddle