Once I started digging through the Iowa court records, I realized that I had another problem.
There were two Jon Martinacs.
Jon's father was also named Jon Michael Martinac.
His father was born in 1957.
My husband, Jon Michael Martinac Jr., was born in 1975.
The Iowa court search contained records for both men.
Because their names were so similar, it would have been incredibly easy to combine their histories and accidentally blame one man for the other man's cases.
I wasn't going to make that mistake.
I started separating the records by date of birth, the designation of Jr. or Sr., case number, location, party role, and the underlying documents whenever I could.
Some of the older court entries belong to Jon's father, not my husband.
Those cases are not part of Jon Jr.'s criminal history in this story.
But there was one important piece of evidence from 2007 that I knew did belong to my Jon.
An attorney's office, Munger, Reinschmidt & Denne, LLP, sent correspondence dated April 18, 2007 to Jon Martinac while he was at the Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
The letter referenced paperwork the firm had received concerning a matter identified as “State v. Martinac.”
The firm said it had not yet reviewed the paperwork or worked on the case because a $10,000 retainer had not been received.
The accompanying fee agreement described hourly rates, expenses, billing, withdrawal, interest, and the $10,000 advance retainer.
That document does not tell me everything.
It does not, by itself, establish the exact charge involved.
It does not establish the outcome of the case.
It does not establish whether the retainer was eventually paid.
But it does establish that correspondence concerning a State v. Martinac matter was sent directly to Jon Martinac at the Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility in 2007.
That was my husband.
Not his father.
So while I removed the older court cases that belonged to Jon's father, I did not remove the 2007 correspondence.
It belongs in Jon's story because I know who that correspondence was addressed to.
That distinction became one of the first major lessons I learned while putting this story together.
A name on a court screen isn't enough.
You have to figure out which person the record actually belongs to.
And the more I looked, the more important that became.
The Iowa court records showed years of cases involving Jon Michael Martinac Jr.
There were civil cases involving me and Jon.
There were criminal cases.
There were protection-order matters.
There were search warrants.
There were traffic cases.
There were later criminal cases that reached the appellate courts.
The records also showed that in 2019, I became involved in a number of legal events of my own.
One of the most confusing involved a warrant I did not understand.
In 2021, I contacted the Plymouth County Attorney after learning that there was a warrant for me.
I remember how strange that felt.
I was living in Missouri.
I had learned about the warrant indirectly.
Local law enforcement did not seem to know the details.
I was told that a 2019 warrant existed and that it involved drugs.
So I contacted the county attorney's office myself.
I asked for the complaints because I said I had no knowledge of the incident.
The response I received explained that two charges had been filed by Deputy Petersen on or about November 20, 2019, following a traffic stop.
The county attorney also explained that the scope of the warrant pickup was controlled by the sheriff and could be nationwide, statewide, countywide, or limited by mileage.
That answer raised more questions for me than it answered.
What exactly had I supposedly done?
What was the traffic stop?
What were the two charges?
Why had I not known about them?
Why was there a warrant?
And why was I learning about it years later?
The county attorney told me that until the warrant was returned, he only had copies of the complaints.
I asked for those complaints.
I wanted to know what the government was saying I had done.
I didn't want a rumor.
I didn't want somebody's memory of a conversation.
I didn't want a secondhand explanation.
I wanted the actual paperwork.
That became a theme throughout this entire story.
I started wanting the documents.
Not because documents always tell the truth.
They don't.
But because documents tell you what someone actually put into the official record.
And once something is in the official record, you can compare it against everything else.
One of the most important examples involved my own 2019 Iowa case.
On February 21, 2019, I was involved in a traffic stop in Plymouth County.
The records describe an investigation involving a vehicle, a cracked windshield, license issues, and suspected drug-related evidence.
The charges included operating while intoxicated, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of methamphetamine, and driving without a valid license.
But what mattered was what happened afterward.
The court record shows that the OWI and drug-related charges were dismissed on June 14, 2019.
The court order stated that the cases were dismissed in the interests of justice.
The court costs were taxed to the State, while appointed counsel costs were taxed to me.
The order also stated that any outstanding warrants were recalled.
That was not a small detail.
It was the difference between an allegation appearing in a file and a case actually ending in court.
The same year, Jon became involved in his own serious legal matters.
One case involved allegations arising from a March 21, 2019 incident after a 911 call.
The prosecution's minutes of evidence described Deputy Aaron Leusink and Chief Deputy Jeff TeBrink as witnesses concerning contact with Jon and an investigation into an allegation that he had assaulted and/or strangled me.
The minutes said injuries were observed when officers contacted me.
Those were allegations contained in the prosecution's evidence.
I have to describe them that way because a police report or minutes of evidence are not the same thing as a judicial finding.
The legal system has its own process.
Evidence is presented.
Charges are filed.
Defendants have rights.
Cases can be dismissed.
Cases can go to trial.
And sometimes juries decide what has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
There were also protection-order proceedings.
There were motions asking the court to terminate protection orders.
There were letters from the Plymouth County Attorney's Office.
In July 2019, the county attorney's office sent me a letter concerning State of Iowa v. Jon Michael Martinac Jr., Case No. SMSM043953, involving an alleged violation of a no-contact order.
The letter said formal charges had been filed and that the office understood I might have suffered a loss or been a victim of the defendant's actions.
There were subpoenas.
There was a victim-impact statement.
There were more court documents.
Then, in January 2020, the paper trail took another turn.
A Le Mars Police Department news release stated that officers went to an apartment on Central Avenue looking for Jon, who was wanted.
According to the release, officers located him and discovered additional crimes.
A search warrant was obtained.
Jon was arrested for being a felon in possession of ammunition, possession of drug paraphernalia, and a Plymouth County warrant.
The Plymouth County Sheriff's Office assisted.
Again, I have to separate what the police release says from what a court ultimately decided.
The same caution applies to search-warrant affidavits.
One affidavit described unclaimed bags, drug paraphernalia, suspected methamphetamine, prescription medication bearing Jon's name, and other items.
The affidavit was the government's account used to establish probable cause for the warrant.
It was not itself a conviction.
Years later, however, some of the cases did reach the appellate courts.
In 2024, the Iowa Court of Appeals issued decisions involving Jon Michael Martinac Jr.
One case involved a conviction for delivery of methamphetamine.
Another involved a conviction for driving while barred.
Those convictions were affirmed on appeal.
That was different from an allegation in a police report.
It was different from a warrant application.
It was different from a dismissed charge.
It was a court conviction that survived appellate review.
That distinction matters because this book isn't supposed to be a collection of accusations.
It is supposed to be the story of what happened to me and what I can actually document.
The deeper I went into the records, the more I understood that my story wasn't just about Jon.
It wasn't just about our marriage.
It wasn't just about the children.
It wasn't just about police.
It wasn't just about court cases.
It was about what happens when a person's private life becomes a public record one document at a time.
A marriage certificate.
A police report.
A protection order.
A text message.
A court docket.
A warrant.
A dismissal.
A conviction.
A letter from an attorney.
A letter from Children's Division.
A search warrant.
A victim-impact statement.
A message asking someone for money because there wasn't enough food.
A hotel room.
A phone that wouldn't work.
A drive to Iowa.
A family trying to hold itself together.
Piece by piece, the paper trail became another version of my life.
Sometimes it confirmed what I remembered.
Sometimes it contradicted what I thought I remembered.
Sometimes it raised questions I still don't have answers to.
And sometimes it forced me to admit something I had spent years trying not to see.
I had spent a huge part of my life trying to save everyone else.
I tried to save my marriage.
I tried to save Jon.
I tried to protect my children.
I tried to explain the unexplainable.
I tried to make broken things whole.
I tried to carry problems that were never mine to carry.
And somewhere along the way, I forgot about the person who needed saving too.
Me.
That is where this story is really going.
Not toward revenge.
Not toward rewriting the past.
Not toward pretending I was perfect.
Not toward pretending anyone else was perfect either.
Just toward finally saving myself.
Once I started digging through the Iowa court records, I realized that I had another problem.
There were two Jon Martinacs.
Jon's father was also named Jon Michael Martinac.
His father was born in 1957.
My husband, Jon Michael Martinac Jr., was born in 1975.
The Iowa court search contained records for both men.
Because their names were so similar, it would have been incredibly easy to combine their histories and accidentally blame one man for the other man's cases.
I wasn't going to make that mistake.
I started separating the records by date of birth, the designation of Jr. or Sr., case number, location, party role, and the underlying documents whenever I could.
Some of the older court entries belong to Jon's father, not my husband.
Those cases are not part of Jon Jr.'s criminal history in this story.
But there was one important piece of evidence from 2007 that I knew did belong to my Jon.
An attorney's office, Munger, Reinschmidt & Denne, LLP, sent correspondence dated April 18, 2007 to Jon Martinac while he was at the Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
The letter referenced paperwork the firm had received concerning a matter identified as “State v. Martinac.”
The firm said it had not yet reviewed the paperwork or worked on the case because a $10,000 retainer had not been received.
The accompanying fee agreement described hourly rates, expenses, billing, withdrawal, interest, and the $10,000 advance retainer.
That document does not tell me everything.
It does not, by itself, establish the exact charge involved.
It does not establish the outcome of the case.
It does not establish whether the retainer was eventually paid.
But it does establish that correspondence concerning a State v. Martinac matter was sent directly to Jon Martinac at the Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility in 2007.
That was my husband.
Not his father.
So while I removed the older court cases that belonged to Jon's father, I did not remove the 2007 correspondence.
It belongs in Jon's story because I know who that correspondence was addressed to.
That distinction became one of the first major lessons I learned while putting this story together.
A name on a court screen isn't enough.
You have to figure out which person the record actually belongs to.
And the more I looked, the more important that became.
The Iowa court records showed years of cases involving Jon Michael Martinac Jr.
There were civil cases involving me and Jon.
There were criminal cases.
There were protection-order matters.
There were search warrants.
There were traffic cases.
There were later criminal cases that reached the appellate courts.
The records also showed that in 2019, I became involved in a number of legal events of my own.
One of the most confusing involved a warrant I did not understand.
In 2021, I contacted the Plymouth County Attorney after learning that there was a warrant for me.
I remember how strange that felt.
I was living in Missouri.
I had learned about the warrant indirectly.
Local law enforcement did not seem to know the details.
I was told that a 2019 warrant existed and that it involved drugs.
So I contacted the county attorney's office myself.
I asked for the complaints because I said I had no knowledge of the incident.
The response I received explained that two charges had been filed by Deputy Petersen on or about November 20, 2019, following a traffic stop.
The county attorney also explained that the scope of the warrant pickup was controlled by the sheriff and could be nationwide, statewide, countywide, or limited by mileage.
That answer raised more questions for me than it answered.
What exactly had I supposedly done?
What was the traffic stop?
What were the two charges?
Why had I not known about them?
Why was there a warrant?
And why was I learning about it years later?
The county attorney told me that until the warrant was returned, he only had copies of the complaints.
I asked for those complaints.
I wanted to know what the government was saying I had done.
I didn't want a rumor.
I didn't want somebody's memory of a conversation.
I didn't want a secondhand explanation.
I wanted the actual paperwork.
That became a theme throughout this entire story.
I started wanting the documents.
Not because documents always tell the truth.
They don't.
But because documents tell you what someone actually put into the official record.
And once something is in the official record, you can compare it against everything else.
One of the most important examples involved my own 2019 Iowa case.
On February 21, 2019, I was involved in a traffic stop in Plymouth County.
The records describe an investigation involving a vehicle, a cracked windshield, license issues, and suspected drug-related evidence.
The charges included operating while intoxicated, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of methamphetamine, and driving without a valid license.
But what mattered was what happened afterward.
The court record shows that the OWI and drug-related charges were dismissed on June 14, 2019.
The court order stated that the cases were dismissed in the interests of justice.
The court costs were taxed to the State, while appointed counsel costs were taxed to me.
The order also stated that any outstanding warrants were recalled.
That was not a small detail.
It was the difference between an allegation appearing in a file and a case actually ending in court.
The same year, Jon became involved in his own serious legal matters.
One case involved allegations arising from a March 21, 2019 incident after a 911 call.
The prosecution's minutes of evidence described Deputy Aaron Leusink and Chief Deputy Jeff TeBrink as witnesses concerning contact with Jon and an investigation into an allegation that he had assaulted and/or strangled me.
The minutes said injuries were observed when officers contacted me.
Those were allegations contained in the prosecution's evidence.
I have to describe them that way because a police report or minutes of evidence are not the same thing as a judicial finding.
The legal system has its own process.
Evidence is presented.
Charges are filed.
Defendants have rights.
Cases can be dismissed.
Cases can go to trial.
And sometimes juries decide what has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
There were also protection-order proceedings.
There were motions asking the court to terminate protection orders.
There were letters from the Plymouth County Attorney's Office.
In July 2019, the county attorney's office sent me a letter concerning State of Iowa v. Jon Michael Martinac Jr., Case No. SMSM043953, involving an alleged violation of a no-contact order.
The letter said formal charges had been filed and that the office understood I might have suffered a loss or been a victim of the defendant's actions.
There were subpoenas.
There was a victim-impact statement.
There were more court documents.
Then, in January 2020, the paper trail took another turn.
A Le Mars Police Department news release stated that officers went to an apartment on Central Avenue looking for Jon, who was wanted.
According to the release, officers located him and discovered additional crimes.
A search warrant was obtained.
Jon was arrested for being a felon in possession of ammunition, possession of drug paraphernalia, and a Plymouth County warrant.
The Plymouth County Sheriff's Office assisted.
Again, I have to separate what the police release says from what a court ultimately decided.
The same caution applies to search-warrant affidavits.
One affidavit described unclaimed bags, drug paraphernalia, suspected methamphetamine, prescription medication bearing Jon's name, and other items.
The affidavit was the government's account used to establish probable cause for the warrant.
It was not itself a conviction.
Years later, however, some of the cases did reach the appellate courts.
In 2024, the Iowa Court of Appeals issued decisions involving Jon Michael Martinac Jr.
One case involved a conviction for delivery of methamphetamine.
Another involved a conviction for driving while barred.
Those convictions were affirmed on appeal.
That was different from an allegation in a police report.
It was different from a warrant application.
It was different from a dismissed charge.
It was a court conviction that survived appellate review.
That distinction matters because this book isn't supposed to be a collection of accusations.
It is supposed to be the story of what happened to me and what I can actually document.
The deeper I went into the records, the more I understood that my story wasn't just about Jon.
It wasn't just about our marriage.
It wasn't just about the children.
It wasn't just about police.
It wasn't just about court cases.
It was about what happens when a person's private life becomes a public record one document at a time.
A marriage certificate.
A police report.
A protection order.
A text message.
A court docket.
A warrant.
A dismissal.
A conviction.
A letter from an attorney.
A letter from Children's Division.
A search warrant.
A victim-impact statement.
A message asking someone for money because there wasn't enough food.
A hotel room.
A phone that wouldn't work.
A drive to Iowa.
A family trying to hold itself together.
Piece by piece, the paper trail became another version of my life.
Sometimes it confirmed what I remembered.
Sometimes it contradicted what I thought I remembered.
Sometimes it raised questions I still don't have answers to.
And sometimes it forced me to admit something I had spent years trying not to see.
I had spent a huge part of my life trying to save everyone else.
I tried to save my marriage.
I tried to save Jon.
I tried to protect my children.
I tried to explain the unexplainable.
I tried to make broken things whole.
I tried to carry problems that were never mine to carry.
And somewhere along the way, I forgot about the person who needed saving too.
Me.
That is where this story is really going.
Not toward revenge.
Not toward rewriting the past.
Not toward pretending I was perfect.
Not toward pretending anyone else was perfect either.
Just toward finally saving myself.