The Least Known Assassin

The Story of Ramon Mercader "It seems a constant throughout history, that an assassin have a grand name. John Wilkes Booth, Charles Julius Guiteau, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, Mark David Chapman; the list goes on. It was the executioner of Lev Davidovich Trotsky, however, who had the grandest name of all.

Jaime Ramon Mercader del Rio Hernandez.

Certainly people know this, right? Ramon Mercader (as he is more frequently referred to) did, after all, end the life of a man with more political and historical significance than any of the Kennedy boys could have ever hoped to possess. In spite of this, Mercader is virtually unknown. On the topic of Trotsky’s demise, books generally suffice it to say that the great revolutionary was killed by a stalinist agent wielding and ice pick, few texts bother to mention the assassin’s mouthful of names."