Contretemps Arises Over Ice Pick Used To Murder Trotsky
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MEXICO CITY – One of history’s most infamous murder weapons, the ice pick police believe was used to kill Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, has resurfaced just weeks before the 65th anniversary of his assassination.
Tests to authenticate the weapon have been delayed by a dispute between the current owner, who may hope to sell it, and Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov, who wants it for his museum at the communist’s onetime home in Mexico City.
The ice pick is in the hands of Ana Alicia Salas, whose father, she says, removed it from an evidence room while serving as a secret police commander in the 1940s. She is considering selling the foot-long mountaineer’s ice pick, but hasn’t decided on a price.
Trotsky helped lead the 1917 Russian Revolution, but split with Josef Stalin and fled to Mexico in 1937. Stalin is widely believed to have arranged Trotsky’s August 20, 1940, murder, in which a Spanish-born Soviet agent, Ramon Mercader, sneaked up behind Trotsky and sank the ice pick into his skull.
The weapon in Ms. Salas’s possession has faint, reddish-brown stains. But there’s only one sure way to prove the stains are Trotsky’s blood, and Mr. Volkov holds the key: his DNA.
“Looking at it objectively, this is a piece of history,” Mr. Volkov said in an interview. “It should be in the museum.”
Mr.Volkov, 79, has offered a sample of his DNA for comparison to whatever material can be recovered from the pick, but only if Ms. Salas donates the artifact to his museum. “If it is for commercial purposes, I refuse to participate in this kind of thing,” Mr. Volkov said.
Ms. Salas, 50, refuses to consider donating the ice pick. “Sometimes people don’t value things that are given away,” she told the Associated Press.
She is quick to paint her father, Alfredo, who retired in 1965 and died in 1985, as a model Secret Service agent. She said he had been granted permission by superiors to keep the ice pick for a “museum of criminology” and that he put the ice pick with his personal possessions after someone tried to steal it from a display.
“I think this instrument is valuable. It is a piece of world history,” Ms. Salas said. Asked what the ice pick is worth, Ms. Salas says: “I don’t know, because I don’t know who’s interested in it.”
For Mr. Volkov, the dispute echoes his ancestor’s battle. “Marxism is still valid and present, though we do live in a market economy,” he acknowledged with a chuckle.
