by Alex Lloyd Gross
Matthew John Bustin, 34, from King Of Prussia Pa. will be living at the Bucks County Prison for the next nine to 23 months. He became obsessed with a Bensalem woman who he began following. Once the police were called, it is scary to learn just how far Bustin’s obsession was with this woman. He just was sentenced for his stalking conviction in Bucks County Court of Common Pleas.
For starters, he met her on a dating site, but started doing internet searches on her before the two met. Apparently, Bustin was spurned before by a female in Lehigh County and that girl filed charges against him as well.
Bustin bought a GPS tracker and was caught on security cameras placing it on the underside of the victims car. The stalking culminated when the victim returned to her apartment from vacation on April 16, 2024, to a dark apartment with the electricity cut, internet disconnected, and her security camera turned to the wall. “I truly believed there was someone in my apartment with me,” she stated. She said she waited in her kitchen with a knife and called a friend for help.
She described the “scariest part” as “knowing someone had been in my apartment… yet still not knowing who would do this.” She filed a police report the next day and within two days of filing the police report, she was in so much fear that she moved out. The victim continued to sleep with a knife next to her bed. In what she described as “a heart-stopping moment,” she found a note tucked among the pillows. The discovery, which she described as a “sick psychological game,” confirmed her fears that Bustin was her stalker.
The victim was so scared that she moved out of her apartment and back with her mother. They took the car toa garage to check for additional trackers and both the victim and her mother incurred expenses for moving and lost time from work.
.In her statement, the victim reflected on Bustin’s history, noting that he was charged in the Lehigh County stalking case around the time he called her for the first time. “The immediacy of recurrence is scary,” she said. “This is not the behavior of someone who has learned from past repercussions, and it isn’t the behavior of someone who feels remorseful.”
As a condition of his sentence, Bustin will not be eligible for parole until he completes the H.O.P.E. substance abuse recovery program. He has also been ordered to have no contact with the victim or any social media sites, pay $1,334.60 in restitution, and comply with all mental health and drug and alcohol requirements.