A devastating clerical error allowed a career criminal with nearly 40 arrests to remain free on the streets, ultimately leading to the alleged senseless murder of a 22-year-old aspiring teacher from North Carolina.
Logan Federico was visiting friends at the University of South Carolina in Columbia when Alexander Dickey, 30, reportedly broke into the Cypress Street home where she was staying and fatally shot her in the early morning hours of May 3.
The Waxhaw, North Carolina native was pursuing her dream of becoming a teacher when her life was cut short by what Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook described as a “random” crime during a May 5 press conference.
Dickey entered the home in the early morning, stole several credit and debit cards, and shot Federico in what investigators determined was an unprovoked attack.
Stephen Federico, Logan’s father, expressed outrage over the circumstances that allowed his daughter’s killer to remain free despite an extensive criminal history spanning more than a decade.
“The main cog in this whole problem was the processing system of a career criminal that eventually escalated to executing Logan Federico,” Stephen Federico told Fox News Digital.
The grieving father disputed characterizations of the crime as random, emphasizing Dickey’s lengthy criminal record.
“This wasn’t just a random go-in-and-shoot-somebody. This was a guy that was a career criminal,” he said.
“He wasn’t a random criminal. He was a career criminal that came across my daughter… and literally stuck a gun in her rib cage and pulled the trigger, for absolutely no reason,” Stephen Federico continued.
Dickey accumulated nearly 40 prior arrests across different North Carolina counties dating back more than a decade before the fatal encounter with Federico.
Despite his extensive criminal history, Dickey pleaded guilty to a first offense of third-degree burglary in 2023 and received only probation, even though he had previously been convicted of second and third-degree burglary charges in 2014.
The lenient sentencing occurred because of apparent clerical errors that created gaps in Dickey’s criminal record, preventing prosecutors from seeing his full history of offenses.
South Carolina officials and agencies have begun pointing fingers at each other over what appear to have been two separate clerical errors that contributed to the incomplete record.
In August 2014, Dickey faced charges for grand larceny, and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division received his fingerprints associated with that arrest, which appear on his criminal history.
When authorities served Dickey with four additional burglary and larceny warrants in August 2014, however, those charges and dispositions do not appear on his criminal history because SLED did not receive additional prints for that set of charges.
In October 2014, authorities served three additional warrants on burglary and larceny charges, but those charges and dispositions also do not appear on his criminal history due to missing fingerprints.
The missing information proved crucial because a first-degree burglary charge carries a minimum 15-year prison sentence and a maximum life sentence.
In November 2014, Dickey pleaded guilty to second-degree non-violent burglary and received a suspended 10-year sentence, meaning he served no immediate prison time.
In March 2015, Dickey had one of his two other burglary charges from 2014 dropped and pleaded guilty to what was recorded as a first offense of third-degree burglary, which carries a lighter sentence than subsequent offenses.
In 2023, he again pleaded guilty to what was recorded as a first offense of third-degree burglary for a second time due to the incomplete records.
Rick Hubbard, Solicitor of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, told WIS he was unaware of Dickey’s prior convictions, which ultimately impacted his sentencing in 2023.
Hubbard alleged that Dickey’s criminal record filed with SLED was incomplete, preventing proper prosecution and sentencing.
Stephen Federico described learning about the error in Dickey’s rap sheet as “the most horrendous thing other than” the phone call he received on the day his daughter was murdered.
“If he’s not out on the street… this meeting never happens,” Federico said of Dickey’s encounter with his daughter on May 3.
SLED suggested the rap sheet was incomplete because the agency never received Dickey’s fingerprints for the 2014 arrest for burglary, which should have come from the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department.
The Lexington County Sheriff’s Office responded that Dickey’s full record was readily available, even if his fingerprints were not included in his SLED rap sheet.
“Anyone in the criminal justice system who had a role in his numerous cases over the past decade could access his long criminal history and see a variety of charges, including 23 arrests in Lexington County alone,” the department said.
The sheriff’s office noted that Dickey’s charges involving eight different law enforcement agencies led the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department to book Dickey 11 times between 2013 and 2025.
“Dickey was held in [Lexington County Detention Center] from Aug. 13, 2014 until he was sent to state prison Nov. 21, 2014. His fingerprints were taken during the booking process on Aug. 13, 2014,” the department stated.
Fox News reported that the department acknowledged concerns about whether fingerprints were transmitted according to protocol after additional arrest warrants were served while Dickey remained in custody in August and October 2014.
“We have reviewed all of Dickey’s bookings and we were unable to determine if his prints were taken at the time of those additional in-custody bookings in 2014. It’s possible the lack of prints associated with those bookings were the result of human or machine error,” the sheriff’s department said.
Stephen Federico expressed gratitude to law enforcement for solving his daughter’s murder within 36 hours but remains determined to expose problems within the criminal justice system.
“I am angry, and I’m trying to be very professional, very respectful, and I will never, ever downgrade what the law enforcement did for me and my family and Logan in 36 hours of solving this case,” he said.
“But that doesn’t mean… that there aren’t holes in the system,” Stephen Federico continued.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of why it happened.”
Dickey faces charges including murder, two counts of first-degree burglary, two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, two counts of grand larceny, grand larceny of a motor vehicle and three counts of financial transaction card theft.
His next court appearance is scheduled for July 25, and he faces life in prison for the charges filed against him in Lexington County.
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