Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río (born 7 February 1913 – 18 October 1978), more commonly known as Ramón Mercader, was a Spanish communist and NKVD agent who assassinated Russian Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in August 1940 with an ice axe. He served 20 years in a Mexican prison for the murder. Joseph Stalin presented him with an Order of Lenin "in absentia." His mother participated in the preparation of the assassination, waited for Ramon near the house of Trotsky but escaped to Moscow.