What we know about the Bucks County man accused of decapitating his father

Authorities are continuing to investigate the grisly murder of a Bucks County man who police say was killed by his son.

Justin Mohn, 32, allegedly killed his father, Michael F. Mohn, Tuesday night in the family’s home in Levittown, according to court documents. Police discovered the elder Mohn’s decapitated body Tuesday night.

In the hours after the murder, police said, Mohn also posted a graphic video to YouTube in which he displayed his father’s severed head and ranted about the federal government.

Mohn has since been arrested, and was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, and possessing an instrument of a crime. He is being held without bail, and may face additional charges as the investigation progresses, officials said Friday.

Here is what we know:

Middletown Township police responded to the Mohn family home on Upper Orchard Drive after Justin Mohn’s mother discovered the body and ran to a neighbor’s house for help. There, they found his father’s decapitated body in a first-floor bathroom surrounded by “a large amount of blood,” according to a criminal complaint.

Officers located Michael Mohn’s head in a bedroom, where it had been wrapped in plastic and placed in a cooking pot. Police also found a machete and large kitchen knife in a bathtub, and bloodied rubber gloves on a desk and in a trash can, the complaint said.

Justin Mohn’s mother told police that only her son and husband were at home Tuesday evening. When she returned home and discovered the scene, she found the front door unlocked, and her son and her husband’s 2009 Toyota Corolla missing.

An autopsy of Michael Mohn’s body found that he had been shot in the head before he was decapitated, officials said.

Officials believe Mohn committed the murder “acting with clear mind, aware of his actions, and proud of his consequences,” Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said Friday.

Schorn added that Mohn legally purchased a handgun at a Croydon gun shop the day before he allegedly killed his father. In the days before that purchase, he also surrendered his medical marijuana card in order to be able to legally purchase and possess the weapon, she said. Mohn had no prior history of diagnosed mental health issues.

“It was evident to us that he was of clear mind in his purpose and what he was doing, aside from what his beliefs are, he was of clear mind doing this,” Schorn said Friday.

» READ MORE: A Bucks County man is facing murder charges after allegedly decapitating his father, then posting about it on YouTube

Mohn posted a graphic video to YouTube in which he showed his father’s severed head and ranted against the federal government, police said. In the 14-minute clip, which has since been removed from the website, Mohn referred to his father, a retired civil engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers, as a “traitor” and said that he was glad he was dead.

The video showed Mohn wearing rubber gloves while picking his father’s head out of the cooking pot, according to the criminal complaint. Mohn also spoke about right-wing conspiracy theories and railed against what he referred to as “far-left woke mobs.”

Titled “Mohn’s Militia — A Call to Arms for American Patriots,” the video remained online for about five hours, attracting some 5,000 views before YouTube removed it from the website. It was removed due to “strict policies prohibiting graphic violence and violent extremism,” the company said.

In the video, Schorn said, Mohn gave an order “for all militia and patriots across the USA to kill federal employees.” He also called for all federal agents, U.S. Marshals, federal judges and border patrol agents to be “tortured for information and then publicly executed.”

Mohn also gave the home address of a Philadelphia federal judge who previously ruled against him in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education. In the wake of the video’s discovery, U.S. Marshals assisted in securing the safety of individuals named in the video, Schorn said.

Mohn is a 2014 graduate of Pennsylvania State University, where he majored in agribusiness management. Court records show that between 2014 and 2020, he held a variety of short-term jobs, working in Colorado Springs at insurance and credit union call centers and at Jersey Mike’s Subs. For one month in 2020, he worked as a client service representative at a Bristol-based security company.

In 2022, he sued the U.S. Department of Education for $10 million, alleging that he was not sufficiently warned that he would be unable to repay his college loans. Since graduating college, Mohn applied for hundreds of jobs, according to an accounting of his work search included in the lawsuit.

In court, where he represented himself, he pinned his difficulty in finding work — which led to him moving back home with his parents — on being perceived by employers as an “overeducated, white male.” He made a similar claim in a 2018 lawsuit against Progressive Insurance, alleging that he had been discriminated against in his job there because he was an “overeducated, overqualified young male.”

A federal appeals court dismissed Mohn’s claim against the Department of Education in June. His lawsuit against Progressive was not successful.

Neighbors described Mohn as having something “off” about him, noting that he rarely spoke to anyone despite having moved into his parents’ home at least two years ago. One neighbor told The Inquirer that they had not observed anything that would make them believe Mohn would be violent. Another said that he could often be seen sitting on a raised manhole in a clearing, staring at their home and smoking.

Mohn did not have an arrest record, and had minor contact with police in Bucks County, according to Bucks County officials. In postings online, he called for a “hypothetical, violent revolution” against “traitor older generations” over the debt and unemployment experienced by generations that succeeded them.

In 2020, Mohn penned a manifesto entitled “America’s Coming Bloody Revolution” that contained similar sentiments to those espoused in the YouTube video he posted following his father’s murder. Posted to free-online publishing site Booksie, the manifesto, which has since been deleted, called for a “revolution” against people born before 1991, with Mohn claiming that prior generations were “trading away the future of America’s youth.”

On Reddit, a now-deleted profile shows Mohn’s activity on a subreddit known as “MilitiaArmoryOnlyFans,” which discusses firearms and related products. In July 2023, Mohn posted a message under the subject line “Join America’s National Militia — Mohn’s Militia” to skeptical response.

A former roommate that lived with Mohn in Colorado Springs referred to him as “a very odd person” who often ranted about conspiratorial beliefs. In one incident during their time living together, the roommate said, Mohn punched holes in the apartment’s walls and broke a mirror that belonged to the building after he “blacked out” in a fit of rage caused by dirty dishes.

Former coworkers, meanwhile said that Mohn’s online writings made them uneasy.

“This guy is very weird, making people uncomfortable, and he also has all this writing, but you can’t fire people for that,” one former coworker said.

Police pinged Mohn’s cell phone at around 9 p.m. Tuesday, tracking him to near Fort Indiantown Gap, where Pennsylvania’s National Guard is stationed.

There, police found his father’s 2009 Toyota Corolla parked outside the National Guard installation, said Angela Watson, communications director of the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

Responding officers found that Mohn was armed with a loaded 9mm Sig Sauer pistol that was missing one bullet, Schorn said. He had climbed the fence into the National Guard installation, where he was arrested without incident.

Officials said Friday that they believe he traveled to the installation as part of an effort to “mobilize the PA National Guard to raise arms against the federal government,” Schorn said.

Staff writers Oona Goodin-Smith, Vinny Vella, Ximena Conde, Ryan W. Briggs, and Robert Moran contributed to this article.