After Being Released From Prison Because He Was Deemed Too Old To Be Dangerous, 77-Year-Old Kills Again

Officials in Maine thought a 77-year-old man who'd previously served time for murdering his wife and assaulting several different women was too old to be dangerous. They were wrong.

Albert Flick was found guilty Wednesday in the 2018 murder of Kimberly Dobbie. Flick had stabbed Dobbie, a homeless woman, in front of her two children on July 15, 2018. Flick had previously been found guilty in the death of his wife, Sandra Flick, who he'd stabbed to death in front of her daughter on Jan. 31, 1979 — weeks after she'd served him divorce papers.

Flick had been released in 2000 for that crime after being jailed at the Maine State Prison for just over 20 years, according to News Center Maine. But in 2007, Flick was charged after once again violently attacking a woman he had been seeing romantically. In 2010, after being released yet again, he assaulted another woman and was incarcerated, according to The Washington Post.

Prosecutors at the time pleaded with a judge for a harsh sentence, believing Flick would only become increasingly belligerent as he grew older.

“Clearly, probation is not working,” said prosecutor Katherine Tierney, according to the Press Herald of Portland, Maine. “At this point, I just don’t know what else to do. I think there’s a huge safety risk to women and society when it comes to Mr. Flick.”

Flick once more served time from 2014 to 2016 after being arrested for threatening a woman with a screwdriver. Flick was most recently released from prison on Jan. 28, 2016. A judge's decision to release Flick was theoretically supported by data from a 2017 U.S. Sentencing Commission study, which concluded that only 13.4 percent of offenders released over the age of 65 were arrested again in an eight-year period after being freed, compared to 68 percent of those under the age of 21.

Flick met Dobbie while living in Lewiston, Maine and quickly became infatuated with her. Witnesses said he was obsessed with her and would follow her throughout her day, though the feelings were apparently not mutual. He ended up attacking and killing her last summer. 

“It became if ‘I can’t have her, I will kill her,” Assistant Attorney General Bud Ellis told jurors, according to WGME of Portland, Maine. “And that’s exactly what he did.”

A jury took only 40 minutes to deliberate before finding Flick guilty. 

Sandra Flick's daughter, Elsie Kimball, now blames many individuals in the justice system for allowing her mother's killer to be freed.

"I just don’t understand how all these people can justify their part in this," Kimball, now 52, told News Center Maine. "Because even though [Flick is] the one that actually committed the crime, I think that their actions provided the opportunity."

"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 continued. "How the law makes it alright for their mom to now be gone and for them to have to witness it."