It Never Should’ve Happened

It never should have happened. He was too old to kill again. 

When Albert Flick was released from his first prison sentence for killing his wife, he restarted his pattern of threatening and victimizing women, but he’d age out of it, wouldn’t he? Statistics said so. His drooping wrinkled face and frail body did not look like that of a brazen killer. He’d be in his mid-70s by the time he was free again, surely the threat he posed to society would fade. 

But that would not be the case.

The stories of these three women, and the unnamed women also victimized by the same man, will have you asking what is justice, really? Does it and can it exist when a convicted killer is afforded more mercy than those whose lives he threatened and ended?

The Sandra Flick Case

It was over. Sandra served Albert the divorce papers that day, January 10, 1979. Sandra worried that Albert would not be amicable to the situation, so Westbrook Police were on hand to escort her soon to be ex-husband from their home. 

35-year old Sandra Flick was married before she became Mrs. Albert Flick, and had a 12-year old daughter from that previous marriage. Sandra’s daughter was home on January 29 when Albert came back to pick up some of his belongings from their once shared apartment. Sandra asked him to do it, but they’d been feuding since the day the divorce papers were served. According to court records, the main dispute was custody of their children. There was no telling how the interaction might go.

Sandra’s daughter, whose name I’ve decided not to use for privacy reasons, was in a back bedroom of their Brown Street apartment when Albert showed up. She could hear muffled conversation between her mother and Albert, something about fishing poles. Through a crack in the door, the young girl watched as her mother fetched the fishing poles in question. Albert fiddled in his pocket, retrieving a jackknife. He wanted to show Sandra how to remove the hooks from the fishing lines. 

The situation went from benign to chaotic quickly. As Sandra bent over the fishing pole to reach for the hook, Albert suddenly grabbed her arm, bending it behind her back and pressing his other hand over her mouth. Sandra called out her daughter’s name – a mother’s first instinct in danger to protect her child – and the girl ran from the back bedroom and out of the apartment towards help. She caught one more glimpse of Albert, who had overtaken her mother and was pinning her to the chair. 

Sandra’s daughter reached their downstairs neighbors, a husband and wife on the second floor. When they opened the door they found the girl saying that Albert was going to kill her mother. The wife called 9-1-1 as her husband climbed the stairs to check on Sandra. As he was bounding the steps, he encountered Albert, covered in blood. He asked the neighbor for help. Albert said he didn’t mean to do it.

When first responders arrived, they found Sandra with her throat cut. She was transported to a Portland hospital where she later died, but not before telling police exactly who was responsible for her death. Her soon to be ex-husband, Albert Flick.

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