Killer Who Got Lighter Sentence for Being Too Old To Be Dangerous Convicted of Another Murder
A 77-year-old man who was spared a long sentence by a judge who thought he was too old to be a threat to anyone has been convicted of murder in a crime eerily similar to one for which he was first convicted in 1979.
Albert Flick was found guilty Wednesday in the July 2018 murder of Kimberly Dobbie, 48, who was stabbed at least 11 times outside a Lewiston, Maine, laundromat as her 12-year-old twins were nearby.
Flick had been convicted in 1979 of the murder of his then-wife Sandra Flick, whom he stabbed 14 times as her daughter witnessed the crime, the New York Post reported.
He served 20 years of his original 30-year sentence but even after his release had brushes with the law. In 2010, a judge rejected a longer sentence after Flick was convicted of assaulting a woman on the grounds that at his age he would not be a threat. He was most recently released from prison in 2016.
In Flick’s trial this week, Assistant Attorney General Robert Ellis said Dobbie’s murder was carefully planned.
“The obsession became, ‘If I can’t have her, I will kill her,’ and that’s exactly what he did,” Ellis said, according to WLBZ-TV in Bangor.
Security footage showed Flick stabbing Dobbie, who lived in a homeless shelter with her children.
“He takes out the knife, stands in front of Kim, raises his arm, there is some interaction and seconds later he thrusts the knife, hidden behind her leg into her body,” Ellis said.
Jury finds Albert Flick guilty.https://t.co/YWXPpldpd2
— Portland Press Herald (@PressHerald) July 17, 2019
Ellis said that when sentencing comes around in August, he will ask that Flick never be released.
“Mr. Flick murdered his estranged wife in similar fashion in 1979. He murdered Kim Dobbie, stabbing her 11 times at a minimum, now. I think obsession and infatuation was clearly in his twisted mind,” he said.
Elsie Clement, who saw Flick stab her mother to death in 1979, said the system failed.
“I don’t understand how somebody that is obviously such a threat to society was back on the streets,” Clement told WLBZ in July 2018. “I don’t understand. I can’t for the life of me wrap my head around it. I can’t.”
She said many people bear a share of the responsibility for the latest crime Flick committed.
“I just don’t understand how all these people can justify their part in this. Because even though [Flick is] the one that actually committed the crime, I think that their actions provided the opportunity,” Clement said.
She said Dobbie’s sons will be haunted forever.
“They will spend the rest of their lives second-guessing and questioning themselves,” Clement said. “If I had tried to defend her instead of running, would she be alive?”
She challenged all those who set Flick free to face Dobbie’s children.
“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 OK. How the law makes it alright for their mom to now be gone and for them to have to witness it,” she said.
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