TROTSKY FANS TO MONITOR E-BAY. The daughter of a former Mexican secret-service agent, Ana Alicia Salas, claims that she possesses the steel mountaineering pick that was used to kill Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in August 1940, "The Guardian" reported on 16 June.
According to Salas, her father stole the pick, which is still stained
with Trotsky's blood, in order to preserve it for posterity. Trotsky's grandson, Seva Volkhov, has offered to provide a DNA sample
to test the blood on the pick but only if Salas agrees to donate the
instrument to the museum in the house where Trotsky was killed. She, however, maintains that she is "looking for some financial benefit."
According to gazeta.ru, the wielder of the pick, Ramon Merkader, an NKVD lieutenant in the Spanish Republican Army, fared fairly well despite his bloody deed. He served his 20-year prison sentence for murdering Trotsky in relative comfort in a spacious cell with a small patio where he was allowed to entertain overnight female visitors. After his sentence was up, he flew to Moscow where he received the gold star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, a pension, a four-room apartment in central Moscow, and a dacha outside the city. Still, one honor eluded him: the Communist Party of the Soviet Union rejected his request to become a party member, according to RFE/RL's Russian
Service. JAC