It took less than an hour for jurors in Auburn to find Albert Flick guilty of murdering Kimberly Dobbie, 48, outside a Lewiston laundromat on July 15, 2018.
Her twin 11-year-old sons were nearby and security cameras captured the moments they ran to their mother as she was being killed.
"I'm glad the verdict is done and over and I'm glad he'll never be able to walk the streets again," Dobbie's friend James Lipps told reporters outside the court Wednesday.
Assistant Attorney General Bud Ellis said he'll ask a judge to make sure Flick doesn't see the light of day again.
The prosecutor told NBC affiliate WCSH in Portland that he was particularly saddened knowing that Dobbie's children will never be able to shake the impact of their mom's murder. The boys are now living with a grandmother in Massachusetts.
"What happened to these children is just horrific," Ellis said. "I know there is family involvement, services and we're hoping for the best."
This wasn't the first time Flick has violently attacked a woman.
Back in 1979, he killed his wife, Sandra, in shockingly similar circumstances, stabbing her to death while the woman's young daughter was nearby. He was convicted of murder and served 25 years behind bars.
After his release in 2004, Flick was convicted of assaulting two other women in 2010. A judge sentenced Flick to almost four years behind bars — resisting recommendations of prosecutors and probation officials to give him eight or nine years, believing the man would be too old to commit any more violent acts.
"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," Maine Superior Court Justice Robert E. Crowley said at the time.
Crowley is retired from the bench and now works as a mediator through a Portland law firm. He did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment Friday.
After Flick's release in 2014, he moved to Lewiston. Prosecutors said he was infatuated with Dobbie and followed her around town and even ate at the homeless shelter where she was staying. The killer and his victim, witnesses testified, were not in a relationship.
Dobbie was stabbed 14 times and the wounds penetrated her heart and a lung, a state medical examiner testified.
Flick's sentencing is set for Aug. 9 and he could get anywhere from 25 years to life behind bars.
David K. Li is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.Associated Press contributed.
Reader Comments
Few people understand the statistical importance of that statement. (Most SOTTites, however, do. )
It does make one wonder, however, IF, given all of the inflated/false flag multiiple-victims/single shooter events of late, including 9/11/2001, (which were very likely included in such a 'serial killer' statistic; whether, if such events were removed from the calculation, what would the comparative ration change to?
If you've got the answer,- and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you do have it - I am all ears.
Thanks!
R.C.
Wiki: A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people,[1] usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them.
67,41% of the world serial killers are from the us. Source: [Link]
Thanks!
R.C.
I know SOTT folk see the absurdity of that, but most AmeriKants simply...can't.
R.C.
From its foundation the USA , (even before it was the USA and was a collection of English colonies) has been exceptionally prone to violence and murder. Its genocide of some 40 million Native Americans, its breaking of over 500 treaties made with various tribes, its instigation of endless wars with other nations and itself, (in its 243-year history just since 1776, the USA has NOT been at war for only 15 of those years,) all this must be indicative of an inclination to violence among its people. After all, the very image of the "Wild West" was invented in the USA and immortalized by Hollywood.
When I immigrated to this country from the UK 40 years ago, the very first thing I felt on getting off the plane was the undercurrent of violence beneath the surface. (First impressions are remembered.) There was an ethos of anger, intolerance and short fuses behind a mask of endless smiles and surface courtesy, which are probably a mechanism to defuse the violence lying just under the surface.
.... Entirely a subjective observation, which I no longer can detect, since after 40 years I have now become inured to this ethos and see it as normal. But those statistics about serial killers from Star Eater cannot be denied, and probably indicate that while people everywhere have frustrations in their lives, and lousy childhoods, the propensity to use violence and murder as a psychic salve is greater in America than elsewhere.
Maybe it has something to do with the genetic types who uprooted themselves from their roots and traveled halfway around the globe to attempt life in a new and uncertain future. Most people in the countries from which America sourced its immigrants passively endured their unhappy lives, while only a few were enterprising and brave enough to attempt a new start by leaving their homes and relying only on their own wits and strength to survive in this new land.
If this is a fact it does not bode well for the country's future. As its external power declines, the violence may become turned inwards against itself, and may well end up fracturing the unity which is enshrined in the very name of the country - the "United" States.
- LG
Regarding its people most are of UK descend and I have often wondered how the world should have looked if the uk hadnt been a superpower for the last 500 years. Less wars, less native peoples eradicated etc etc