Jag tror att dessa två passager bäst adresserar din fråga:
‘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
Detta föreslår möjligheten att Death Eaters själva var involverade i öppningen av Secrets Chamber på något sätt, huruvida att hjälpa Tom Riddle med forskning eller bevaka dörren till tjejens badrum medan han faktiskt öppnade kammaren, till exempel. Så jag tycker att det är rättvist att extrapolera detta för att föreslå att, ja, åtminstone några av hans dödsareföreningar visste att han var Slytherins arvinge; Jag skulle kunna föreställa mig att Tom Riddle skulle ha selektivt bragged om detta faktum till vissa individer.
‘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
Canon föreslår att åtminstone en del av Death Eaters var involverade i öppningen av Secrets Chamber, och legenden om Secrets Chamber gjorde det klart att den enda personen som skulle kunna öppna kammaren skulle vara arving av Slytherin. När Tom Riddle fullbordade detta hade Death Eaters varit tvungen att veta att Tom var Slytherins sanna arvinge.