Suspect known to law enforcement

Minden murder suspect James Matlean has a long and varied criminal history that began with three felony convictions by the time he was 19.

On Wednesday he was charged in the 2008 shooting death of Ben Oxley.

Matlean, 23, was already serving an eight-month jail sentence for stealing cigarettes from a convenience store when he was charged Wednesday with murder.

Crimes like the cigarette theft plagued the Gardnerville man who has criminal records in Nevada and California.

While his California record was not immediately available, Nevada Department of Corrections records indicate Matlean served 14 months in a Southern Nevada medium security prison for car theft.

Court records indicated a judge gave him a chance to avoid prison in July 2006 if he completed a bootcamp program. But after failing to do so, Matlean ended up serving time.

NDOC records indicate he was paroled in October 2007 to Gardnerville and was on state parole until Feb. 22, 2008, the day after a gunman entered Oxley's Wildhorse Lane home in Minden and shot the sleeping man.

Matlean's next contact with police in the area came in January 2009 when he stole four cartons of cigarettes from a Gardnerville convenience store and was recognized by clerks and police on surveillance tapes. In April 2009 he was given probation, with a suspended jail sentence, for petty

larceny.

In the subsequent months Matlean apparently received permission to move to Washington, records indicate, but officials learned he was instead in Arizona without notifying his probation officer. In December, a judge revoked his probation and Matlean was in the process of serving the suspended

8-month jail sentence when arrested in the Oxley

murder.