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Losing his 22-year-old daughter, Logan hit Stephen Federico like a “punch in the gut,” but learning an apparent clerical error kept the suspect from being behind bars years ago made the heartbreak even worse.
Alexander Dickey was arrested in May after allegedly killing Logan during a home burglary in South Carolina, and his lengthy rap sheet with arrests dating back more than a decade has since entered the spotlight.
Even after pleading guilty to burglary charges in 2023, he was able to roam free, being given a lighter sentence due to the apparent error.
“We were given [three] explanations,” Federico told “Fox & Friends First” on Tuesday.
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“[The] first [explanation was] that he served his time, which is 1,000% incorrect. The other was, a couple of weeks after Logan was killed, we received word from an investigative reporter that there was a fingerprint mishap… the fingerprints weren’t sent to SLED (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division), which was gut-wrenching enough…”
According to Federico, the same investigative reporter later informed his family that the mishap had happened twice with Dickey.
“Two instances where there was a fingerprint mishap kind of led to my daughter’s future,” he continued.
The Lexington County Sheriff’s Office took a look at Dickey’s prior fingerprinting records and said the following:
“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.”
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In August 2014, Dickey was charged with grand larceny. SLED received his fingerprints associated with that arrest, and the charge and disposition appear in his criminal history, the agency told Fox News Digital.
Dickey was served with four additional burglary and larceny warrants in August 2014, but those charges and dispositions do not appear in his criminal history, and SLED said it did not receive additional prints for that set of charges.
Authorities served three additional warrants on burglary and larceny charges in October 2014, but those charges and dispositions do not appear in his criminal history, SLED said, adding that the agency did not receive additional prints for this set of charges.
SLED suggested the rap sheet was incomplete because the agency never got Dickey’s fingerprints for the 2014 arrest for burglary, which should have come from the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, the Lexington County Sheriff’s Office called the incident a “senseless tragedy,” adding that Dickey’s full record was 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.
“His felony charges from April 2013 through April 2024 are on his rap sheet and also listed on the court’s public website.”
Federico insists his daughter was taken because an “opportunity” was given to a “career criminal.”
“You can look back at the fingerprints in both scenarios, but at the end of the day, it took a background and a search through the investigative reporter. It took her 10 minutes to find out about all the other crimes he committed. So, the fingerprints played a huge role in it, among other things. But at the end of it, all somebody had to do was a search.”
Fox News’ Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.
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