1906
Founded in 1906 by Heinrich Frederick Dangberg Jr., who named it after his town of Minden in Germany.
about 0:04:47The story
Benjamin Robert Oxley was born on January 20th, 1972 in West Covina, California, and grew up in Hawaii after the family moved to the big island when he was ten. He graduated from high school in 1990, worked at a country inn, and later moved to the mainland. Ben then met Melissa online, and the two married; Melissa's teenage brother Craig lived with them, and shortly after the wedding Ben and Melissa were granted full custody of Alyssa. The family settled in Minden, Nevada.
At about 3.30 a.m. on February 21st, 2008, Melissa called 911 from the family home in Minden and said there was blood everywhere and she could not wake Ben. She told officers she had heard a noise, smelled gun smoke, found the front door open and then realised her husband had been shot in the head. Ben was dead in the master bedroom from a shotgun wound to the back of the skull, and there was no sign of a break-in. Deputies found shotgun shells in Craig's bedroom and guns, including a shotgun, in the garage. Craig, seventeen, said he had been asleep and heard nothing.
Alyssa, then six, told police she had heard a door creak and seen a figure in the house, but could not say who it was.
Three months after the murder investigators learned that Melissa was the beneficiary of a 400,000 dollar life insurance policy on Ben, but the insurance company said she had never enquired about it, and she said she had not known it existed.
Melissa raised Alyssa and later took in Alyssa's half-sister Brandy.