Arrest in 2015 Arizona murder of Minnesota woman Allison Feldman

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Police in Scottsdale, Ariz. announced an arrest Tuesday in connection to the 2015 murder of a Minnesota woman there, ending a more than three-year mystery that baffled her family and locals alike.

Then 31-year-old Minnetonka High School graduate Allison Feldman was last seen alive on Valentine's Day of 2015 and was found in a pool of blood with severe head trauma on the floor of her Scottsdale home just a few days later. Police found no signs of forced entry, though investigators claimed they found DNA at the scene that did not immediately lead them to the killer.

Authorities say they arrested 42-year-old Ian Mitcham as a suspect in the case Tuesday morning outside his work. He is currently in custody.

“It’s very bittersweet—this isn’t going to bring her back—it’s very unlikely we’ll ever get the answers we want to know about why," said Kelly Weinblatt, Feldman's sister.

Arizona Department of Public Safety officials identified him through a technique called familial DNA testing. This process runs a DNA profile obtained from the crime scene through the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) to find a possible familial link among those who are in the database.

In the Feldman case, the DNA found at the murder scene did not have a perfect match in CODIS. Last year, investigators received approval to run familial DNA testing because the murder case had gone cold and they had exhausted all possible leads. This marked the first Arizona case to use familial DNA testing. When the investigators ran the unknown DNA through CODIS, it matched with a family member of Mitcham's. 

At this point, law enforcement say there is no known link between Mitcham and Feldman. At the time of the murder, Mitcham lived in north Tempe. Weinblatt says the latest development only raises more questions.

“Who is this guy, why did he go into my sister’s house, what did he want, why did he do this? " said Weinblatt. "I don’t know if we’ll ever get any of those answered.”

Family noted in the wake of her death that Feldman was a new homeowner and had recently received a promotion at work, making her death that much more difficult to process.