Enraged father reveals the horror he uncovered when probing his daughter’s merciless execution in her sleep at frat house

The man accused of fatally shooting a 22-year-old aspiring teacher at an off-campus fraternity house at the University of South Carolina was a career criminal who had a decades-long rap sheet.

Logan Federico, of Waxhaw, North Carolina, was visiting friends in Columbia, South Carolina, for a last hurrah before they graduated and went their separate ways.

But what was meant to be a celebratory weekend ended in tragedy for Logan – and her family. ‘She never came home,’ her father, Stephen Federico, told the Daily Mail.

Around 3am on May 3, Logan had returned to Cypress Street in the Old Shandon neighborhood where she was staying after a night partying at a fraternity house.

She was asleep when a man later identified as Alexander Dickey allegedly entered the room, stole her bank cards and shot Logan in the chest. According to prosecutors Dickey, 30, had also just burgled the fraternity rental home next door, stealing a firearm and the keys to a vehicle.

Logan’s parents began to fear something was wrong when they received emails warning that their daughter’s bank account was overdrawn. 

Dickey was arrested 36 hours later after going on a shopping spree and driving around in the stolen vehicle, police said.

Federico told the Daily Mail he was enraged to learn that the accused killer had racked up 39 arrests and 25 felonies but had served only about 600 days in prison.

‘What we are finding out, which has been confirmed, is that there was a screw up in two arrests – for fingerprints that SLED [South Carolina Law Enforcement Division] either never received or they were never taken,’ he said. ‘A lot of his other arrests were pled down to first-time offenses or minor offenses.

‘He and my daughter should have never met.’

The Richland County coroner confirmed that Logan died from a gunshot wound to the chest. 

Dickey has been charged with murder, two counts of first-degree burglary, two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon.

He also faces two counts of grand larceny, grand larceny of a motor vehicle, and three counts of financial transaction card theft, according to a press release by the Columbia Police Department.

At a press conference on May 5, Columbia Police Chief W. H. Skip Holbrook described the shooting as a ‘random’ crime as Logan’s family wept.

‘We’re moms and dads and brothers and sisters,’ Holbrook said. ‘This touches all of us in a way that will never leave us. Logan was a true victim, a helpless victim.’

It has been nine weeks since the murder and, though still numb with pain, Logan’s family commended police for the swift arrest of Dickey.

‘I can’t speak highly enough of the Columbia PD, Lexington and Richland County for how they came together to make sure this POS [piece of s***] got caught,’ Federico said.

There were at least six fraternity brothers in the house, including a friend Logan was sleeping beside, he said, but no one had woken up when the weapon was fired.  

‘That’s something that is kind of unbelievable to me.

‘I think we all know how loud shotguns are. That nobody in the house heard it…,’ he said, trailing off.

‘Obviously, I don’t think they had anything to do with it – but my daughter lay there for six and a half to seven hours.’

Federico described the circumstances leading up to Logan’s death as ‘a perfect recipe for tragedy’, questioning how a college student could bring a loaded gun to the house without storing it securely, why the two neighboring fraternity rental housed were not locked, and how a clerical error over the missing finger prints had occurred.

The Lexington County solicitors office told Federico that had Dickey’s prior felonies been properly logged, he probably would have been in prison serving a 10 to 15-year sentence instead of being free to allegedly murder Logan.

‘If one of those three or four things would have taken place, my beautiful daughter would have still been with us,’ he said. 

Under South Carolina law, burglary in the first degree is considered a violent crime with an automatic life sentence. But Federico said even that would not be justice in the case of his daughter’s death.

‘The punishment has to fit the crime,’ he said. ‘My daughter was a true innocent victim and there is no life sentence in my vocabulary for him because he didn’t give my daughter a life sentence… he gave her a death sentence and he was the executioner.’

Federico described his only daughter as a selfless person who always helped the underdog and ‘flew to the beat of her own drum’.

She loved the Philadelphia Eagles and her father said ‘it breaks my heart’ that he had never taken her to see the NFL team at their home stadium, Lincoln Financial Field. 

He talked fondly of her habit of waiting for new music from Taylor Swift to drop at midnight before going on long drives to ponder the meaning of the lyrics and how she could apply them to her own life.

At the time of her murder, she was working at a restaurant bar while attending South Piedmont Community College and had plans to enroll in Charles College of Charleston to become a teacher.

‘She was beautiful inside and out. She was loved by so many and wanted to affect kids and be part of their lives,’ he said. 

He criticized the university for not having made contact with his family. 

‘Maybe the University of South Carolina would show some respect and actually reach out to us and show some condolences. They never did,’ he said.

‘Alexander Dickey may have been the one who pulled the trigger but there are other people with blood on their hands. He was given opportunity, a weapon and easy access to Logan.’ 

Federico has since hired high-profile attorney Richard ‘Dick’ Harpootlian, who represented Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced South Carolina attorney convicted of murdering his wife and son in 2021.

His main focus now is to ensure that Logan’s killer is given the death penalty. ‘For me, there is no other way,’ Federico said.

‘Nothing else will be acceptable.’ But he knows that he does not have a say.

At Dickey’s initial hearing, Federico came face to face in a gut-wrenching encounter with the man who allegedly executed his daughter.

‘It took my wife’s strength to hold me back from jumping over the rail but I also know I need to see this through for Logan. There’s bigger things than me spending time in jail that I’m trying to accomplish.’

One of those missions is to speak at high schools and colleges to share his daughter’s story and spare other families similar heartache.

‘I need to get the message out. Come August, it is moving time for colleges,’ he said.

‘If your kids are going to be joining a fraternity or sorority, what are their gun policies? If you are living off-campus, what is the code of conduct?

‘People don’t know the pain of losing a child. Not losing a child by illness or a car accident that hits differently – but being the parent of a murdered child.’

Alexander Dickey’s next court appearance is scheduled for July 25. He faces life in prison for the charges filed against him in Lexington County.