International Spy Museum acquires ax used to kill Leon Trotsky, other espionage artifacts

H. Keith Melton spent 40 years looking for the ice-climbing ax used in the bloody assassination of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. It had been sitting under a bed in Mexico City for decades. Much easier was acquiring a mangled, basketball-size chunk of Gary Powers' U2 spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. It was a gift from a Soviet official. The items are part of the world's largest private collection of spy artifacts. Melton, a wealthy businessman from Boca Raton, Florida, is