Alex Rackley

His killing was the crime at the center of the 1970 New Haven Black Panther trials.

During his trial, McLucas again admitted firing the second shot into Rackley's body but insisted he had been an unwilling collaborator in the killing. Jurors listened to audio recordings the Panthers had made of Rackley's whimpering, tortured voice during his two days of agony. In September 1970, Lonnie McLucas was found guilty and sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. The deliberations of the racially mixed jury, which lasted 33 hours over six days, were the longest in Connecticut history to date, and the jurors acquitted McLucas of other, more serious charges, including a capital charge for kidnapping leading to death. His enormously relieved defense attorney, Theodore Roskoff, declared, "The judge was fair, the jury was fair, and, in this case, a black revolutionary was given a fair trial."

In the spring of 1969, Rackley came under suspicion. His loyalty was questioned, and rumors circulated that he was passing information about the Panthers to the FBI. The situation was exacerbated by the presence of two national Panther figures from the California headquarters, Field Marshal George W. Sams Jr., and Landon Williams. The two men had arrived on the east coast in May with the intention of instilling "discipline" into the party.

In 1968, Rackley left his home state of Florida and moved to New York City. There, he became involved with the Black Panther Party, but his role seems to have been limited to giving classes in martial arts.

By the late 1960s, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense knew that they were a primary target of local and federal law enforcement officials, who sought to infiltrate the movement with informants. In September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as the "greatest threat to the internal security of the country." By 1969, the Black Panthers were the primary target of the FBI's COINTELPRO, and the target of 233 of 295 authorized "Black Nationalist" COINTELPRO actions.

Alex Rackley (June 2, 1949 – May 20, 1969) was an American activist who was a member of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the late-1960s. In May 1969, Rackley was suspected by other Panthers of being a police informant. He was brought to Panther headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut, held captive and tortured there for several days, condemned to death, taken to the wetlands of Middlefield, Connecticut, and murdered there.