Father of slain 22-year-old pledges to ‘do anything’ to strengthen criminal record keeping

Seventeen months after his daughter’s murder, Steve Federico said Thursday his “passion now” is a federal law on criminal record keeping that could prevent similar tragedies.

His daughter, Logan Federico, was killed May 3, 2025, in a downtown Columbia home while visiting friends at the University of South Carolina.

Alexander Dickey, 31, is accused of fatally shooting the 22-year-old after breaking into the house where she was staying.

The Waxhaw, North Carolina, father argues it was failures of South Carolina’s court system that contributed to his daughter’s death.

Father of slain 22-year-old wants federal prosecutors to handle daughter’s murder case

“This was preventable,” he said Thursday during a public roundtable meeting in Charleston with federal and local officials.

If there hadn’t been record-keeping mistakes and plea deals that led to lighter sentencing, Federico said, the man accused of killing his daughter likely would have still been in prison for past convictions.

“He shouldn’t have been on the streets,” he said to a gathering that included U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, South Carolina’s U.S. attorney, Bryan Stirling; Lowcountry sheriffs and police chiefs.

“Because of this, I’m not a girl dad anymore, and that’s not fair to me,” Federico said through tears.

Logan’s Law

In May, near the one-year anniversary of her death, U.S. Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina’s 7th District and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced matching bills in their chambers dubbed “Logan’s Law.”

After the senator died in July, his appointed replacement, Sen. Darline Graham, signed on to her late brother’s bill. On the House side, 5th District Rep. Ralph Norman is the only co-sponsor among South Carolina’s delegation. He’ll leave office in January.

Neither bill has received a hearing and both chambers are on recess until Nov. 9, after the midterm elections. The legislation almost certainly will need to be reintroduced next year.

The proposal would create a national database accessible to the general public of people convicted of crimes considered violent.

Convictions qualify for the database if they involve physical violence or the threat of physical violence, and the sentence is at least 180 days in prison.

States that don’t participate would risk losing federal funding from the U.S. Department of Justice.

“This is my passion now. I will do anything I have to do to get this law passed,” Federico said.

“I’m not going to save one more life; I’m going to save thousands,” he added.

Blanche also pledged his support for the bill. And Graham, if elected to a full term, promised to take up her brother’s mantle, calling Logan’s Law her “new passion.”

Fry said the bill will likely receive bipartisan support.

“This is not a red or blue issue,” he said.

Ongoing case

As for Dickey, his case is still ongoing.

According to police, Dickey killed the 22-year-old amid a multi-day crime spree that began with him stealing a car in Richland County and ended with his arrest after he broke into a Lexington County home and set it on fire.

Dickey remains in jail without bond after his indictment June 25, 2025, on 12 charges, including murder, burglary and possession of a weapon during a violent crime, according to Richland County court records.

He also faces 23 charges in Lexington County, including arson, burglary, larceny and banking crimes, according to court records.

The charges involve a stolen gun and the use of credit cards stolen from Logan Federico.

“He didn’t kill our daughter for a debit card,” her father said. “She was the only one awake that could identify him. He killed a witness.”

“That’s how brutal of a person this person is. He didn’t have to do it. He just could have left,” Federico added.

Dickey’s public defender, Fielding Pringle, declined to comment Thursday to the SC Daily Gazette. She also declined to comment for an article last year.

Past convictions

Since turning 18, Dickey has been convicted of eight felony charges — mostly for low-level theft and burglary — and pleaded two more down to misdemeanors.

He served three terms in prison: November 2014 to May 2017, April to August 2018, and December 2019 to February 2021, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Chrysti Shain confirmed.

At age 19, a grand larceny conviction, combined with a conviction for third-degree burglary, landed him a five-year prison sentence, of which he served half.

A drug charge led to his short stay in 2018. He was 23 years old.

And at age 24, an unarmed robbery conviction resulted in a four-year sentence, of which he served a little more than one year.

Then, in 2023, police arrested him for burglary again.

After the prosecutors and Dickey reached a plea deal, a judge had the option of sentencing Dickey to as much as five years in prison. The judge also could have rejected the deal, keeping to the original second-degree burglary charge that comes with penalties up to 10 years.

Instead, the judge ruled the 411 days Dickey spent in jail waiting for his case to proceed was enough time served. He was let out on two years probation.

The issue, Lexington County’s chief prosecutor told NBC affiliate WIS-TV, was the earlier burglary charges didn’t show up in his criminal history record maintained by the State Law Enforcement Division. So the plea deal treated the burglary as his first for that offense, despite Dickey’s earlier convictions.

Had they known, 11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard told WIS, his office wouldn’t have struck the deal.

SLED’s explanation was that it never received fingerprints from the 2014 burglary arrest. A receipt of fingerprints is what prompts the agency to add charges to someone’s record.

“A set of fingerprints is the only thing that will identify a subject to their criminal history,” SLED said in a statement Thursday to the Gazette.