Court rules Nantucket no place for a murder trial

The Supreme Judicial Court today ordered a new trial for Thomas E. Toolan III, a New Yorker convicted on Nantucket in 2007 of stabbing to death a longtime Nantucket visitor who had broken off their relationship.

The state's highest court ruled Nantucket was just too small a place to allow a fair trial for Toolan and ordered a new trial somewhere off island. It noted that the 25% of the initial jury pool had some connection to his alleged victim, Elizabeth Lochtefeld, 44, who had grown up vacationing with her family and that the island's first murder in more than two decades attracted considerable local and national press attention.

The extensive links among the victim's family, members of the over-all jury venire, and trial witnesses demonstrate the network of social relations connecting this community, of which the victim was a valued member, and to which the defendant was an outsider.

According to the court, Lochtefeld ended things with Toolan because of his excessive drinking. But after being turned away at LaGuardia from one flight to Nantucket because he was carrying a knife, Toolan slept overnight at the airport, boarded a plane the next morning, flew to Nantucket, rented a car, bought two knives, then drove to Lochtefeld's rental cottage and stabbed her to death, prosecutors charged.

• Complete ruling in Commonwealth vs. Thomas E. Toolan III