A convicted murderer in Auburn, Maine, who was deemed by a judge to be too old to pose a threat to society, was convicted again for killing a woman in front of her twin sons.
Albert Flick, 77, was found guilty on July 17 in the death of Kimberly Dobbie.
The attack, which took place outside a laundromat in Lewiston, was captured on surveillance video. Jurors viewed the video during the trial, the Sun Journal reported.
Dobbie, who was staying at a homeless shelter, was being stalked by Flick, prosecutors said according to the newspaper. The two were not in a relationship.
Assistant Attorney General Bud Ellis said that Flick decided to kill Dobbie when he learned that she was going to leave Lewiston. Ellis said Flick was thinking “‘If I can’t have her, I will kill her,’ ... that’s exactly what he did.”
Long History of Violence
Flick has already been convicted of murder and has had a continuous pattern of attacking women over the past 40 years.In 1979, Flick was sentenced to 30 years in prison the murder of his then-wife, Sandra Flick, in Westbrook. He had stabbed her at least 15 times in the head, neck, and heart, while her then-12-year-old daughter from a previous marriage witnessed the killing, reported the Sun Journal.
Flick served just over 20 years in prison for the crime; he was released on good behavior on Oct. 6, 2000.
He was later charged in 2008 and 2010 for two separate attacks on different women.
In 2008, he attacked his then-girlfriend and then tried to prevent her from testifying against him by intimidating her.
In 2010, shortly after he was released on probation for the 2008 attack, he was sentenced again for assaulting another woman in Portland. The woman had told police that Flick had struck her repeatedly with the handle end of a knife, and later tried to chase her with a screwdriver.
At Flick’s 2010 sentencing, Superior Court Justice Robert E. Crowley gave Flick a three-year suspended sentence with one year of probation for the 2010 assault.
Crowley had disregarded comments from the probation officer, and Flick’s prosecutor, who said he should serve an additional four to five years, because of his longstanding history of violence.
But Crowley pointed out that Flick would be 72-73 at the time of his release in 2014, and said, “At some point Mr. Flick is going to age out of his capacity to engage in this conduct, and incarcerating him beyond the time that he ages out doesn’t seem to me to make good sense from a criminological or fiscal perspective,” the Press Herald reported.
“I don’t understand how somebody that is obviously such a threat to society was back on the streets,” Clement told the news outlet. “I don’t understand. I can’t for the life of me wrap my head around it. I can’t.”
She said that Dobbie’s death could have been prevented.
“I would like to just see [everyone involved] in a line and stand there and tell [Dobbie’s] boys, explain to them how this man was on the streets and how it’s okay,” she told News Center Maine in 2018. “How the law makes it alright for their mom to now be gone and for them to have to witness it.”
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