Albert Flick watches surveillance video of himself buying knives at WalMart, one of which was allegedly used to murder Kimberly Dobbie. Flick appeared at Androscoggin County Superior Court in Auburn Tuesday. He is being represented by Allan Lobozzo. (Andree Kehn/Sun Journal)

AUBURN — Albert Flick, the 76-year-old local man accused of fatally stabbing a woman last month outside a Lewiston laundromat in front of her 11-year-old sons, will be held without bail until his murder trial, a judge ruled Tuesday.

In court Tuesday, Flick denied the murder charge that was handed up earlier this month by an Androscoggin County grand jury. He also pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Albert Flick appears in Androscoggin County Superior Court in Auburn Tuesday on a murder charge. He is being represented by Allan Lobozzo. (Andree Kehn/Sun Journal)

According to state law, a defendant is not criminally responsible by reason of insanity if, at the time of that conduct, as a result of mental disease or defect, the defendant lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct.

Prosecutors presented a witness who testified about evidence police collected against Flick and showed surveillance videos in the courtroom. Androscoggin County Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy concluded there was probable cause to believe Flick had committed the formerly capital crime of murder and that “there is clear and convincing evidence” he posed a “substantial danger to the community” and should be held at Androscoggin County Jail without bail.

Police said Flick stabbed Kimberly Dobbie, 48, in front of her twin sons on the sidewalk outside Rancourt’s laundromat on Sabattus Street, where she had just started a load of laundry at about 10 a.m. July 15.

Prosecutors played surveillance video footage showing the sidewalk in front of the laundromat as Flick paced back and forth before the assault. It showed him attacking Dobbie with a stabbing motion on steps down the sidewalk from the laundromat entrance.

The video showed Dobbie’s boys running back and forth between their mother and the laundromat entrance during the attack. Her children watched as passers-by pulled Flick off their mother and held him down until police arrived.

Maine State Police Detective Michael Chavez, who works at the agency’s Major Crimes Unit, was the lone witness who answered questions about the case the state had built against Flick.

Chavez said Flick had two paring knives at the scene, which he had bought two days earlier at Walmart and had tucked into his pants at the small of his back under a polo shirt. One of the knives was used to stab Dobbie in the heart, liver and lung, he said.

The medical examiner ruled her death was by homicide due to sharp force injuries.

Dobbie had been on her cellphone with a man, telling him that someone had been stalking her, Chavez said.

“She indicated this man would not leave her alone,” Chavez said. Then the man to whom she was talking heard her scream. Then the line disconnected.

A New Hampshire man heard Dobbie’s scream, ran down the sidewalk to see her struggling with Flick and kicked him over. The man held Flick to the ground until police arrived, Chavez said.

Flick was arrested and charged upon his release from Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, where he had been treated for chest pains.

Dobbie and Flick had been acquainted with each other, but had not been romantically involved, police said. Witnesses described Flick as Dobbie’s stalker. She had been living recently with her sons at Hope Haven Gospel Mission on Lincoln Street in Lewiston.

She was expecting to move with her sons within the week into an apartment in Farmington, Chavez said.

Flick lived at 3 Field Ave. in Auburn.

Flick spoke to detectives while at the hospital, Chavez said. Flick told them he’d had a knife and that what had made him so angry that morning “‘had to do with whoever he is. Had to do it,'” Chavez said, referring to the man she had been speaking with on her phone.

Chavez testified that Flick told detectives he might have been jealous of the man Dobbie had been speaking with. Flick said he had only met him once, according to Chavez.

Chavez said surveillance video showed Flick had walked into a Dunkin’ Donuts on Main Street half an hour before he met up with Dobbie and her sons at the laundromat.

Flick’s attorney, Allan Lobozzo, asked Chavez whether Dobbie appeared to have made room for Flick near the place at the Dunkin’ Donuts counter where she and her sons were.

Chavez said that was a “reasonable” assumption.

Asked whether Dobbie had left her sons alone with Flick while she used the bathroom, Chavez said he recalled that she had.

Flick spent more than two decades in prison for fatally stabbing his wife in 1979. Court records show that he killed Sandra Flick by stabbing her 14 times at a Westbrook apartment.