Toolan trial set for June 4 on Nantucket
BY MARY LANCASTER
It took two years and three months, but last Friday a trial date was set for June 4 on Nantucket in the murder case against Thomas Toolan, III, charged in the death of Elizabeth "Beth" Lochtefeld on Oct. 25, 2004.

The date, set at a Jan. 19 hearing in Barnstable Superior Court, was agreed to just 17 days after Judge Richard F. Connon, who is assigned to the case, issued a decision denying all six of Toolan's attorney's defense motions to suppress evidence in the matter. Connon did not rule on a motion to change the trial venue because he wants to first see if a jury can successfully be chosen on Nantucket. Toolan's Brockton lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has maintained that on-going and sensational publicity about the case will make it impossible for his client to receive a fair trial if it is held on the island.

Toolan was arrested in Rhode Island the afternoon of the murder and has been held without bail in the Barnstable House of Correction since his arraignment and subsequent indictment by a Nantucket grand jury. It is alleged that he flew to the island from Manhattan on the morning of Oct. 25, 2004, just days after Ms. Lochtefeld went to New York City to break off her brief relationship with him. Toolan is said to have tracked her down at her Hawthorne Lane cottage and fatally stabbed her.

According to witness accounts, Toolan was seen on the cottage property that morning and the car he was near matched the description of the one he rented at Nantucket Airport. Reddington sought to suppress any evidence found in a police search of that car and the car he rented at the Hyannis airport which he was driving when arrested. Reddington also motioned to quash any evidence obtained in statements Toolan made to Rhode Island offi- cials, trace evidence including fingernail scrapings taken after his arrest and the contents of a package Ms. Lochtefeld left at Parcel Plus to be sent to Toolan the morning of her murder.

Toolan was once a financial executive in New York. Ms. Lochtefeld also lived in New York after college, and in 1987 founded the architectural expediting firm of CODE, NYC, and then with her cousin Eric Lochtefeld co-founded the University of Dreams in New York. She moved year-round to the island a few months before her death. After that event, family members published a series of narratives she was compiling in a book called "Tell Me About Your Dreams," illustrated by her father and

Nantucket artist John Lochtefeld. I