Albert Flick, left, stands beside his defense attorney, Allan Lobozzo, as the jury delivers its verdict at Flick’s murder trial Wednesday in Auburn. Steve Collins/Sun Journal
AUBURN — It took a jury 40 minutes Wednesday to convict Albert Flick, 77, of murder in the stabbing death of a 48-year-old mother of 11-year-old twins outside a Lewiston laundromat a year ago.
Flick, of Auburn, sat expressionless as the jury foreman announced the guilty verdict.
Jurors had watched a video during the trial that showed Flick stabbing Kimberly Dobbie at least 11 times in front of her sons as she sat on the steps outside a Sabattus Street building July 15, 2018.
One of the wounds cut the left ventricle of her heart; another fractured a rib and pierced her right lung, Maine’s deputy chief medical examiner had testified. Dobbie died from blood loss.
The jury of eight men and four women sat through fewer than two days of testimony that included witnesses who said Flick had become obsessed with Dobbie. He had followed her and her boys routinely from where they were staying at the Hope Haven Gospel Mission shelter in Lewiston to the local library, Dunkin’ and even the bus stop. Dobbie appeared to tolerate his attention and presence but didn’t want it, her friends said.
In closing arguments, Assistant Attorney General Bud Ellis told the jury that Flick’s infatuation led to his thinking: “If I can’t have Kim Dobbie, I will kill her.” And, Ellis added, “That’s exactly what he did.”
The jury watched surveillance video of Flick buying two pink-handled paring knives with 5-inch blades at the local Walmart two days before he attacked her.
Defense attorney Allan Lobozzo told the jury that there had been no indication his client posed a threat to Dobbie in the weeks leading up to the attack. She apparently never complained to police or anyone in authority that Flick was harassing her, Lobozzo said.
Sentencing is set for Aug. 9. Flick faces 25 years to life in prison.
Ellis said he will seek a life sentence. Maine has no death penalty.
Flick opted not to testify, after Androscoggin County Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy quizzed him Wednesday morning about his decision-making capacity. On Tuesday, he said he hadn’t taken his diabetes medication and that might have an effect on his ability to consider whether to testify.
In closing arguments Wednesday, Ellis told the jury that Dobbie’s murder “was thought-out. It was deliberate. It was premeditated.”
Flick knew Dobbie was planning to move soon into an apartment in Farmington with her sons and that he wasn’t invited.
“There was no ‘we’ in the equation,” Ellis said. “He murdered her because of that.”
Flick had trailed Dobbie and her sons from a Dunkin’ donuts shop on Main Street to the nearby Rancourt’s Coin-operated LaundryMat on Sabattus Street shortly before 10 a.m.
Flick could be seen pacing inside the building and outside, always keeping Dobbie in his line of sight. Then, after seeing that the sidewalk was clear as Dobbie sat on outdoor steps speaking on her cellphone, he attacked her.
He could be seen on the laundromat’s surveillance video, dressed in a light-blue shirt, as he “reaches back to the small of his back, takes out the knife, stands in front of Kim, raises his arm,” Ellis narrated to the jury.
After some brief interaction with Dobbie, “Seconds later, thrusts the knife … into her body.”
A witness who watched the scene unfold from his apartment window said Flick had grabbed her with his left hand before stabbing her, as she screamed and kicked.
Elliot Meserve said he could hear Dobbie telling Flick to leave her alone. As he stabbed her, Flick’s face was expressionless, Meserve said. “There was no emotion, no rage, no passion,” he said. “It was just blank.”
A New Hampshire man who had been in Maine on business had been in the laundromat and was the first to reach Flick, who had seen him coming but continued to stab Dobbie, Ellis said.
“I drop-kicked him,” Dennis Fisher testified Monday. The knife flew through the air. Fisher put a foot on Flick’s neck as he was lying on the sidewalk until police arrived.
As Fisher described seeing Dobbie lying on the steps bloodied, he wiped tears from his eyes and cheeks.
Ellis said Flick was “guilty of murder beyond any shadow of a doubt.”
Caitlain Jasper of Lewiston, one of the three alternate jurors who was dismissed shortly before the jury began its deliberations, said the evidence was overwhelming to convict Flick, even without the event being captured on video.
Jasper said she felt sorry for Dobbie’s children and for the three men who witnessed the attack and acted swiftly to stop it.
“It was soul-crushing for them,” Jasper said, “and they’ll never be able to forget it.”
The community is lucky to have people like them who were willing to intervene in a moment of terror, Jasper said.
She said she’d hoped Flick would testify so she could better understand why he attacked Dobbie.
In his closing argument, Lobozzo asked the jury: “Had Albert Flick lost his mind in those moments at the laundromat? Is there some unexplained switch-off of reason and volition?”
Flick never offered an explanation for his actions, neither before nor after the attack, Lobozzo said.
Before trial, Flick had filed a motion claiming he wasn’t guilty by reason of insanity, but withdrew that plea and never presented any evidence at trial supporting that defense.
He also had considered waiving his right to a jury trial, but later changed his mind.
Jurors weren’t told of Flick’s history of violence against women, including being sentenced to prison for stabbing his wife 14 times in front of their child in 1979.
A judge who sentenced him for assaulting another woman in 2010 said Flick would no longer represent a threat because of his age. That judge disregarded the recommendations of the prosecutor and probation officer for a longer sentence, and Flick was released in 2014.
Staff Writer Steve Collins contributed to this report.
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