The legal trial of the "New Haven Nine" concerned nine members of the Black Panther Party who were charged in connection with a brutal murder. The severely tortured body of Alex Rackley was found in a Connecticut river. Rackley was himself a former Black Panther but was believed to be a police informant by Party members. The trial became a symbolic political and media event, raising national awareness of the Panthers. The case was significant because the brutal crime at its centre was largely subsumed by the dramatic split in the Panthers' public perception as either violent and threatening militants or victimised and oppressed freedom fighters. Campus radicals at Yale University rallied around the defendants, believing the case to be a further example of injustice towards black Americans.