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| Allison Feldman Murder: Where Is Ian Mitcham Now After His 2026 Conviction? |
Allison Michelle Feldman was 31 when her life was cut short inside her Scottsdale home in February 2015. She had built a career in medical sales, maintained close ties with her family in Minnesota and regularly volunteered with children affected by severe burns.
Her death therefore left investigators with a difficult question: who had entered her home and why? For years, there was no clear answer. The case eventually changed direction after detectives turned to familial DNA searching, a method that led them towards Mitcham and ultimately gave prosecutors the evidence they needed to bring the case to trial.
Feldman was born on June 14, 1983, to Elayne and Harley Feldman and grew up in Minnesota with her sister, Kelly Weinblatt. She attended Minnetonka High School, where she took part in cheerleading and dance, before moving to Arizona and studying Communications with a minor in Spanish at the University of Arizona. She spent part of her university years studying in Spain and graduated in 2005.
Her professional life developed in medical sales, where she worked for Mölnlycke Health Care and became a burn and trauma specialist. Outside work, she volunteered each summer at the Arizona Burn Camp, caring for children affected by serious burns.
By 2014, she had also begun dating Alex Sukhodolov, and the couple had been together for around 10 months when Feldman was killed. She had recently received a promotion at work, making the circumstances of her death even more difficult for those who knew her.
On February 18, 2015, Sukhodolov went to Feldman’s Scottsdale home after being unable to reach her. He found her unresponsive and called 911. Investigators arriving at the property found evidence that suggested a violent struggle, along with traces of bleach that raised the possibility that someone had attempted to remove forensic evidence. Feldman’s bracelet, credit cards and phone were missing, while investigators also found evidence consistent with an assault. Her autopsy concluded that she died from blunt force trauma to the head and asphyxiation.
There was no obvious forced entry, and the investigation initially produced no direct suspect. A partial DNA profile recovered from the scene was entered into the national database but did not produce a direct match.
Sukhodolov was questioned about his movements and told investigators that Feldman had asked him to leave on February 17 before he returned the following day to check on her. Police ultimately cleared him of involvement. Feldman’s father, Harley, told authorities that he had last spoken with his daughter on the night of February 17.
The investigation then settled into the frustrating territory familiar to many cold cases: interviews, evidence reviews and plenty of unanswered questions, but no obvious path forward. In 2017, detectives decided to try familial DNA searching. Instead of looking only for an exact match, investigators searched for genetic relatives of the person whose DNA had been recovered from Feldman’s home.
That search led them to the brother of an incarcerated man. Investigators then learned that the man had a brother named Ian L. Mitcham, who was living in Phoenix. The crucial detail was that police already had a blood sample from Mitcham. It had been collected during an unrelated DUI arrest in January 2015, just weeks before Feldman’s death.
In April 2018, investigators compared Mitcham’s blood sample with the DNA recovered from Feldman’s home. The profiles matched, and Mitcham was arrested on April 10. He was charged with first-degree murder and second-degree burglary, with a sexual assault charge added later. Investigators were unable to establish a known relationship between Mitcham and Feldman or identify a clear motive, leaving prosecutors to argue that the crime was an opportunity rather than the result of an established personal connection.
The DNA evidence later became the centre of a major legal dispute. Mitcham had been told that the blood sample collected during his DUI case would be destroyed if he did not claim it within 90 days. His lawyers argued that using the sample to create a DNA profile without a warrant violated his constitutional rights.
A judge agreed in January 2023 and suppressed the DNA evidence. Prosecutors appealed, and the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed that decision in August 2023. The case eventually reached the Arizona Supreme Court, which ruled on December 17, 2024, that analysing the blood without a warrant constituted an unconstitutional search. But the court also concluded that the resulting DNA profile could still be admitted under the inevitable discovery exception, meaning authorities would have obtained the profile through statutory procedures regardless.
That decision cleared the way for Mitcham’s murder trial, which began in November 2025. Prosecutors argued that he entered Feldman’s home, assaulted and attacked her and ultimately killed her. Their case relied on the DNA evidence alongside other material, including bank records. They portrayed the missing property as evidence of a crime of opportunity. The defence took a different view, arguing that investigators had not sufficiently followed other possible leads and highlighting the absence of an established relationship between Mitcham and Feldman.
On April 9, 2026, a jury convicted Mitcham on all charges. The murder conviction, however, did not immediately settle the question of his ultimate sentence. During the penalty phase, jurors could not reach the required agreement on whether he should receive life imprisonment or the death penalty. The judge declared a mistrial for that phase, while the underlying convictions remained intact.
Mitcham was subsequently sentenced on May 28, 2026, to seven years for sexual assault and three and a half years for burglary, with the terms ordered to run consecutively. The murder sentence was left for a later proceeding because prosecutors planned to retry the unresolved sentencing phase. Based on the information provided, Mitcham appears to remain in custody at Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, pending that further proceeding.
There is something particularly striking about the length of this case. Feldman was killed in 2015, yet the decisive breakthrough did not arrive until years later, and even after an arrest, the DNA evidence itself became the subject of another lengthy legal battle. The case shows how a single piece of forensic evidence can move an investigation forward while also creating a completely separate courtroom argument over how that evidence was obtained.
It also leaves an uncomfortable reminder that cold cases rarely unfold neatly: sometimes the suspect is found, the trial happens and a conviction follows, yet part of the legal process is still unfinished. In Mitcham’s case, that unfinished business is the murder sentencing phase. The conviction stands, but the final sentence for Feldman’s death has yet to be determined.
For now, the key answer to where Ian Mitcham is now is that he is reportedly in custody in Maricopa County, Arizona, awaiting the next stage of the murder sentencing process. Feldman’s story, meanwhile, remains the central reason the case continues to draw attention, particularly as ABC’s 20/20 revisits the investigation in its “Home Alone” episode. What do you make of the long DNA investigation and the legal battle that followed it? Share your thoughts on the case and its unanswered questions.