A man who spent decades in prison for fatally stabbing his wife was released after being deemed too old to pose a threat — only to be convicted this week of a nearly identical crime.
It took jurors in Maine less than an hour to find Albert Flick, 77, guilty in the 2018 murder of a homeless mother, Kimberly Dobbie, who was stabbed at least 11 times while her twin sons watched.
That crime is eerily similar to the slaying that sent Flick to jail for 25 years in 1979 — slashing his then-wife Sandra Flick 14 times in front of her daughter.
Flick was freed in 2004 — only to be sent back to jail in 2010 for assaulting another woman.
The judge at the time ignored the recommendation for a longer sentence, saying Flick wouldn’t be a threat because of his age and it didn’t make sense to keep him locked up.
Flick was released four years later in 2014 and moved to Lewiston.
Prosecutors said he met Dobbie, 48, and became infatuated with her, stalking her and dining at the homeless shelter where she was staying.
Assistant Attorney General Bud Ellis told jurors Flick knew Dobbie was planning on skipping town and thought to himself: “If I can’t have her, I will kill her.”
Two days before the murder Flick purchased a pair of knives at a Walmart, prosecutors said.
He then attacked Dobbie in broad daylight in front of a laundromat, piercing her heart and lungs.
Her 11-year-old twin sons witnessed the slaying. It was also caught on surveillance footage.
Elsie Clement, the woman who was a child when she watched Flick stab her mother to death, said the judge who set him free will have to answer to 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,” Clement told the local NBC outlet.
“How the law makes it alright for their mom to now be gone and for them to have to witness it.”
Flick will be sentenced in August and faces life behind bars.
