EASTON, Pa. \u2014 Olympic champion and one-time congressional candidate Marty Nothstein avoided jail time Monday after pleading guilty to harassing his former paramour in 2024.<\/p>\n
Nothstein, 55, could have faced up to seven months in Northampton County Prison if convicted of a stalking charge that Bethlehem police filed against him in May 2024.<\/p>\n
Authorities alleged he went miles out his way to track his ex-girlfriend’s movements at her home, work and child’s school and ballfields, despite a protection-from-abuse order requiring him to keep his distance.<\/p>\n
Instead, Nothstein, a former Lehigh County commissioner, was sentenced to serve two years of probation and pay a $1,500 fine to the county’s Domestic Violence Fund as part of an arranged sentence.<\/p>\n
He also must pay the victim $12,500 in restitution.<\/p>\n
Nothstein pleaded to guilty harassment, disorderly conduct and defiant trespassing as part of the arrangement. <\/p>\n
He and the victim also agreed to withdraw protection-from-abuse orders they filed against each other. <\/p>\n
As part of his probation, Nothstein may not have contact with the victim. He’s also barred from reaching out to her friends or family with the intent of having them intercede on his behalf, Judge Sam Murray ordered.<\/p>\n
During a lengthy statement to the court, the victim accused Nothstein of damaging her car, killing part of her lawn and ignoring the terms of the protection-from-abuse order she took out against him. <\/p>\n
She emphasized to Murray that she believed Nothstein is dangerous and refuses to respect the law, but she said that she would not be frightened into submission.<\/p>\n
“I’m choosing to end the story of a victim of domestic violence and begin the story of a survivor of domestic violence,” the Bethlehem woman said.<\/p>\n
LehighValleyNews.com is declining to identify her.<\/p>\n
Police said Nothstein and the Bethlehem woman had dated for about 2.5 years before their relationship ended with a physical altercation at her home in February 2024. <\/p>\n
The next day, she filed for a protection-from-abuse order against him in Northampton County Court.<\/p>\n
He responded days later by filing a PFA against her but spent much of March 2024 attempting to contact her through friends and family, according to police.<\/p>\n
The woman reported to police that she saw Nothstein’s pickup truck, as well as a Honda CRV matching one belonging to his adult daughter, near her home and office. <\/p>\n
The Bethlehem woman later reported that someone had killed a large swatch of her lawn. Days later, someone scratched the hood of her car while she was at her son’s baseball game, according to court records.<\/p>\n
On April 20, 2024, the victim spotted the Honda parked down the block from her home, police said. When she approached, she spotted Nothstein inside before he sped away, police said.<\/p>\n
The vehicle was recorded on a neighbor’s doorbell camera, and police obtained a warrant for Nothstein’s phone records.<\/p>\n
The warrant uncovered data showing that even though Nothstein lived 30 minutes away, his phone was near the victim, her work, her son’s school or the athletic fields where the boy played for 12 days over a two-week period in April 2024. <\/p>\n
The records also found that someone used Nothstein’s phone to search, “does glyphosate kill grass when its cold oitsode [sic],” “how quick can police get phome [sic] locations,” “what is a violation of a pfa pa” and “is it illegal to track a vehicle.”<\/p>\n
Defense attorney Joshua E. Karoly noted that under the terms of the plea deal, his client admitted to making unlawful contact with the victim, refusing to immediately leaving her home the night they broke up and cursing in front of her child. <\/p>\n
Nothstein did not admit to the other allegations spelled out by police and the victim, he said.<\/p>\n
“Marty was involved in a personal relationship that ultimately ended under difficult circumstances,” Karoly said in a prepared statement.<\/p>\n
“He regrets his role in the situation and the decisions he made during that time.”<\/p>\n
As part of the deal, the victim dropped complaints that Nothstein had violated the terms of the protection-from-abuse order on 17 occasions.<\/p>\n
Troubled history<\/p>\n
The plea deal is the latest legal turn for Nothstein, who once was a rising star in Lehigh County Republican circles. <\/p>\n
By the time he launched his first political campaign in 2015, he already was a local sports hero after winning a silver medal in the sprint cycling event at the 1996 Olympics and taking home the gold from the Sydney Olympics four years later. <\/p>\n
After his athletic career ended, he became the executive director of the Valley Preferred Cycling Center, the world-class velodrome in Upper Macungie Township. <\/p>\n
He negotiated deals to bring in needed funds to the cash-strapped organization and highlighted his credentials while running for Lehigh County commissioner. <\/p>\n
He was the top vote-getter in the 2015 race and soon became the board chair.<\/p>\n
When U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent announced he would not seek re-election, Nothstein emerged as the party’s choice to succeed him in the 2018 midterms. <\/p>\n
However, his campaign was rocked by reports that he was under investigation by SafeSport, a wing of the U.S. Olympic Committee tasked with looking into allegations of sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n
While no charges ultimately emerged from the SafeSport matter, Nothstein was removed as executive director of the cycling center over allegations of employee strife. <\/p>\n
He went on to lose the 2018 race to Democrat Susan Wild and the 2019 race for the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners.<\/p>\n
Nothstein’s problems didn’t go away after leaving politics. <\/p>\n
In 2021, he was charged in Lehigh County after Pennsylvania State Police recorded him on a wire admitting to harassing an ex-girlfriend. <\/p>\n
Someone had been hounding her and her new boyfriend, breaking their windows and illegally entering their homes. A confidential informant told police that Nothstein told a mandatory reporter that the boyfriend \u2014 a teacher \u2014 had shown pornography to his students.<\/p>\n
Under a negotiated deal in 2023, Nothstein pleaded guilty to defiant trespassing for illegally entering the home of his ex-girlfriend. <\/p>\n
Under the timelines spelled out in the two cases, Nothstein would have started dating the Bethlehem woman while the couple from the first case were being harassed. <\/p>\n
The February 2024 altercation between the Bethlehem woman and Nothstein would have occurred days after he completed his probation from the Lehigh County case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. \u2014 Olympic champion and one-time congressional candidate Marty Nothstein avoided jail time Monday after pleading guilty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,69446,69448,69449,69447],"class_list":{"0":"post-152807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news","11":"tag-marty-nothstein","12":"tag-marty-nothstein-and-criminal-charges","13":"tag-marty-nothstein-and-harassment","14":"tag-marty-nothstein-and-lehigh-county-court"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}