In the quiet hours before dawn on May 3, 2025, the streets of Columbia’s Old Shandon neighborhood slumbered under a veil of humid Southern air. The 2700 block of Cypress Street, a tree-lined enclave of historic homes and off-campus rentals popular with University of South Carolina students, exuded the kind of unassuming safety that lulls young adults into complacency. It was here, in a rented two-story house shared by a group of fraternity brothers, that 22-year-old Logan Haley Federico sought refuge after a night of carefree celebration. What unfolded in the dim light of a second-floor bedroom would shatter not just one family, but ignite a national firestorm over justice, recidivism, and the inscrutable impulses that drive a man to murder.

Logan Federico was no stranger to ambition. Hailing from the small, affluent town of Waxhaw, North Carolina, she embodied the archetype of the driven millennial dreamer. At 5 feet 3 inches and 115 pounds, with a cascade of auburn hair and eyes that sparkled with unyielding optimism, Logan was the kind of young woman who lit up rooms. She was pursuing an education degree at South Piedmont Community College, juggling two part-time jobs—a barista gig by day and tutoring sessions for local kids in the evenings—to fund her passion for teaching. “Logan had this huge heart,” her father, Stephen Federico, would later recount in a voice choked with grief during a blistering congressional testimony. “She loved children of all ages. She believed in second chances, but she also believed in accountability. She forgave, she forgot, but she held people to their word.”

Friends described her as “fierce and fun,” a Taylor Swift devotee who insisted the song “22” was penned just for her. Two weeks before her death, Logan had experienced a pivotal moment: a classroom observation that crystallized her calling. “This is it,” she texted her mother, a photo of wide-eyed elementary students attached. “I’m going to change lives.” Her weekend trip to Columbia was meant to be a jubilant prelude to graduation—a visit to her boyfriend, a USC junior and fellow frat member, filled with laughter, late-night drives, and the electric buzz of college life. On Friday, May 2, Logan and her group hit the bars downtown, toasting to futures bright and boundless. They piled into the Cypress Street house around 3 a.m., the air thick with the scent of cheap beer and youthful invincibility. Logan, exhausted but elated, slipped into bed beside her boyfriend, the world outside fading into a merciful hush.

It was that hush that Alexander Devonte Dickey shattered.

At 30 years old, Dickey was a specter of South Carolina’s underbelly—a “career criminal,” as Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook would brand him in a May 5 press conference that left reporters stunned. Born in 1995 in Lexington County, Dickey had amassed a rap sheet that read like a chronicle of systemic failure: 39 arrests, 25 felony charges, spanning everything from first-degree burglary and armed robbery to possession of stolen vehicles and weapons violations. His crimes dated back to 2013, when, at just 18, he was nabbed for breaking into cars in a Richland County parking lot. Yet, despite the gravity of his offenses—charges that should have netted him over 140 years behind bars—he had served a mere 600 days in prison across a decade. Plea deals, incomplete criminal records from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), and a revolving door of probation violations kept him cycling through the system like a ghost.

Records obtained by WIS-TV paint a damning portrait. In 2014, Dickey faced first-degree burglary but pled down to a misdemeanor, walking free with time served. By 2019, an armed robbery charge—wielding a deadly weapon during a gas station heist—morphed into petit larceny after fingerprints mysteriously vanished from SLED files, denying prosecutors access to his full history. “We were unaware,” Lexington County Solicitor Rick Hubbard admitted in a post-arrest statement, a confession that would fuel months of outrage. In 2023, a third-degree burglary conviction earned him five years, but credits for 411 days pretrial slashed it to probation, set to expire in June 2025—just weeks after Logan’s murder. At the time of the killing, Dickey was wanted in Forest Acres for drug possession and had violated probation multiple times, yet no bench warrant had been issued. “He’s a true convict and deserves to be in jail the rest of his life,” Chief Holbrook thundered, his words echoing the frustration of a department that had crossed paths with Dickey before.

Dickey’s spree that fateful night was a meticulously chaotic descent into depravity, pieced together from surveillance footage, witness statements, and forensic evidence detailed in a Columbia Police Department (CPD) news release. It began around 2 a.m. on May 3, when Dickey, high on methamphetamine after fleeing a USC campus traffic stop, wrecked his vehicle in a residential alley off Devine Street. Undeterred, he abandoned the car and prowled the neighborhood like a predator scenting vulnerability. His first target: a single-story bungalow on Cypress Street. Slipping through an unlocked back door, Dickey rifled drawers and closets, pocketing car keys, a wallet stuffed with debit and credit cards, and—crucially—a 12-gauge shotgun from a locked gun safe. The homeowners, an elderly couple asleep upstairs, awoke to the rustle but dismissed it as wind. Dickey melted into the shadows, shotgun in hand, vehicle keys jingling.

Next door, at the frat house, Logan’s room became his fatal fixation. CPD investigators believe he jimmied a ground-floor window, the creak muffled by the chorus of snores from the other residents. Up the stairs he crept, shotgun loaded with buckshot, his footsteps silent on the worn carpet. Logan’s bedroom door was ajar; she lay curled under a thin sheet, her boyfriend dozing fitfully beside her. What happened next, as reconstructed from autopsy reports and survivor accounts, defies rational comprehension—a tableau of calculated cruelty that has haunted investigators and ignited public fury.

According to the Richland County Coroner’s Office, Logan was roused by the intruder around 3:15 a.m. She stirred, perhaps sensing the chill of the open door, and came face-to-face with Dickey silhouetted in the moonlight. Panic seized her; she screamed for help, her voice a desperate plea that pierced the night but failed to rouse the house. Dickey, unmoved, lunged forward. In the chaos, her boyfriend bolted upright, but Dickey—larger, fueled by drugs and desperation—shoved him aside with the shotgun’s barrel. Witnesses later described Logan as “fighting like a wildcat,” clawing at her attacker’s arm, her nails drawing blood. But Dickey overpowered her, stripping away her nightshirt in a frenzy that left her exposed and vulnerable on the cold hardwood floor.

The final indignity: He forced her to her knees. Kneeling, naked and trembling, Logan begged—words lost to eternity but etched in the collective imagination of a horrified nation. “Please, no,” she might have whispered, her educator’s empathy clashing with primal terror. Dickey, eyes glassy with meth-fueled detachment, raised the stolen 12-gauge. At point-blank range, he fired once into her chest. The blast—a deafening roar that finally jolted the household awake—tore through her sternum, shredding vital organs. Buckshot fragments embedded in the wall behind her, a grim mural of violence. Logan collapsed, lifeless at 3:18 a.m., her blood pooling on the floor like spilled ink from a broken promise.

The boyfriend, dazed and unarmed, lunged too late. Dickey pistol-whipped him, fleeing down the stairs and out the back door. Chaos erupted: Frantic 911 calls, neighbors spilling into the street, sirens wailing through the predawn fog. Paramedics arrived within minutes, but Logan’s pulse had fled. The coroner’s autopsy confirmed a homicide: A single shotgun wound to the chest, no other trauma, her small frame offering no resistance to the devastation. “She was a true victim,” Chief Holbrook emphasized, his voice cracking. “Helpless. Not targeted. Just in the wrong place when evil walked in.”

Dickey’s rampage didn’t end there. Clutching the bloody shotgun and stolen loot, he hot-wired the bungalow’s SUV and peeled out, tires screeching on Cypress Street. By 4:30 a.m., he was in West Columbia, 10 miles south, embarking on what police dubbed a “shopping spree from hell.” Surveillance from a Walmart Supercenter captured him—disheveled, manic—swiping electronics, clothing, and snacks with Logan’s debit card and the elderly couple’s credit cards. Total haul: Over $1,200 in fraudulent purchases, a grotesque mockery of the life he’d just extinguished. “An hour and a half after he executed Logan, he was spending her money,” Stephen Federico seethed in a WCNC Charlotte interview, his fists clenched white-knuckled.

The SUV broke down in Saluda County by midday, stranding Dickey in a rural thicket. He called a tow truck, but CPD, tipped by transaction alerts, was closing in. Spotting cruisers, Dickey bolted into the woods, leading a manhunt that spanned hours. He resurfaced in Gaston, breaking into another home around 4 p.m., dousing furniture with stolen gasoline in a botched arson attempt. Flames licked the curtains before firefighters intervened, arresting him amid the acrid smoke. “He was covered in soot, still clutching Logan’s card,” a deputy recalled. Dickey, unrepentant, spat at officers: “I didn’t mean to, but she screamed.”

Charged with murder, two counts of first-degree burglary, possession of a weapon during a violent crime, grand larceny, and financial transaction card theft in Richland County, plus 23 more in Lexington for arson and larceny, Dickey sits without bail in Lexington County Detention Center. He has yet to enter a plea, his public defender, Fielding Pringle, stonewalling media queries. But the question gnawing at America—What drove Alexander Dickey to this savagery?—remains unanswered, a void filled by speculation as dark as the crime itself.

Prosecutors portray it as opportunistic brutality: A burglary gone awry, Logan’s screams triggering a panic kill to silence a witness. “He wasn’t there for her,” Solicitor Byron Gipson stated in a September letter, emphasizing the randomness. “It was theft, pure and simple, until fear turned it fatal.” Yet, the forced kneeling evokes execution-style intent, a deliberate humiliation that chills forensic psychologists. Dr. Elena Ramirez, a University of South Carolina criminologist, analyzed the case for FITSNews: “This wasn’t impulse. The nudity, the positioning—it’s ritualistic, a power assertion rooted in misogyny or prior trauma. Meth amplified it, but Dickey’s history screams unresolved rage.”

Dickey’s past offers clues, if not answers. Court psychologists noted childhood exposure to domestic violence in Lexington, where his mother battled addiction. Juvenile records, sealed but leaked in media reports, detail early thefts as cries for attention. By 20, armed robbery convictions hinted at escalating sadism. “He targets the vulnerable,” a 2019 probation officer wrote, recommending indefinite incarceration. Speculation swirls: Was Logan a proxy for some deeper vendetta? Racial undertones—Dickey Black, Logan white—have fueled ugly online vitriol, though officials dismiss bias. Or was it the drugs? Toxicology showed methamphetamine levels that warp reality, turning thieves into terminators.

Public reaction has been a powder keg. Stephen Federico’s September 29 testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee in Charlotte, North Carolina, went viral, amassing millions of views. “Bang! Dead. Gone,” he roared, slamming the table. “Why? Because Alexander Devonte Dickey—who was arrested 39 goddamn times, 25 felonies—was on the street!” The clip, raw and unfiltered, sparked #JusticeForLogan, a hashtag trending with over 500,000 posts on X. Vigils in Waxhaw drew thousands, pink-clad mourners—Logan’s favorite color—holding signs: “No More Revolving Doors.” GoFundMe for the Federicos raised $250,000, funding “Logan’s Legacy,” a scholarship for aspiring educators.

Politicians pounced. South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette decried a “failed justice system” on social media. Attorney General Alan Wilson, in a September 30 letter to Gipson, demanded the death penalty, assigning death penalty specialist Melody J. Brown to assist. “Clear aggravating factors,” Wilson wrote, citing the burglary-murder nexus and Dickey’s record. But Gipson, a Democrat, demurred, needing “comprehensive review.” The clash escalated: Rep. Nancy Mace urged federal intervention via the DOJ, warning Wilson’s “PR stunt” jeopardized the case. Rep. Ralph Norman called for Gipson’s impeachment. Gov. Henry McMaster lamented, “This should never have happened.”

Federico, a stoic contractor from Waxhaw, has become an unlikely crusader. “Soft on crime is the problem,” he told Fox News, vowing “Logan’s Law”—federal mandates for inter-county record-sharing and life sentences for three-time violent felons. His pain is visceral: At Logan’s May 22 memorial, pink ribbons fluttered as 500 gathered, sharing stories of her “boundless energy.” “You can’t kill my spirit,” Stephen quoted her hypothetical message to Dickey, tears streaming.

The case mirrors national horrors: Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee stabbed on Charlotte’s light rail by another recidivist, Decarlos Brown Jr. “Too many victims,” Rep. Mark Harris lamented, introducing the “No Funding for Lawless Jurisdictions Act.” North Carolina’s “Iryna’s Law” limits bail for repeat offenders, a blueprint Federico eyes.

As trial looms—potentially 2026—the motive riddle persists. Was it greed, gone lethal? A drug haze erasing empathy? Or something primal, a void no record explains? Dickey’s silence offers no solace. For Logan’s loved ones, the question is secondary to justice: Death, or life without parole? “He earned it,” Stephen insists.

In Waxhaw, a pink butterfly garden blooms in Logan’s honor, petals whispering of stolen dreams. In Columbia, Cypress Street bears scars— boarded windows, wary eyes. America watches, demanding: How many Logans before we lock the door?