Bucks County man beheaded father, posted gruesome video, police say
A Levittown, Bucks County man who police say beheaded his father then posted online a grisly video showing the man’s severed head while ranting about killing federal government employees has been charged with homicide.
Justin Mohn, described as the youngest son of the victim, was taken into custody in Fort Indiantown Gap, some 100 miles away from the Upper Orchard Drive home where officers found the decapitated body of his father, Michael Mohn, on Tuesday.
He was arraigned on murder charges and brought back to Bucks County, said Middletown Police Lt. Pete Feeney.
According to court documents, Justin Mohn used a machete and a large kitchen knife, both found in a bathtub in the home by police, who also recovered the victim’s head wrapped in plastic laying in a large cooking pot. The cause of death was not released Wednesday as the investigation continued.
Feeney said police are still putting together a timeline of events and it remains unclear why
Mohn, 32, fled to Fort Indiantown Gap, home of a large National Guard Training Center.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions and he’s not talking to us about the incident. Well, he’s talking, just not about this,” said Feeney, who was outside the Mohn house Wednesday.
Mohn has also been charged with possession of an instrument of crime and abuse of corpse. Other charges may be filed later Wednesday. He is lodged in Bucks County Jail, Feeney said.
Police were called to the neat, green-shuttered Jubilee-style house about 7 p.m. Tuesday. Justin
Mohn’s mother, Denice, returned home and found her husband’s body. He and his father were the only ones in the home for about five hours, according to the affidavit of probable cause.
The woman’s screams caused at least one neighbor to call police, Feeney said.
“We got called to the home and officers went in and discovered the father deceased,” Middletown Police Department Chief Joseph Bartorilla said outside the crime scene late Tuesday night.
Wednesday morning, police confirmed Michael Mohn, 68, was beheaded, as his son told the world he did in a YouTube video the day before.
Justin Mohn posted the 14-minute video to YouTube around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. In it, Mohn holds up a decapitated head wrapped in plastic and claims it is his father, who he identifies as a federal employee of more than 20 years. He described his father as a “traitor” in his violent, anti-government ramblings on the video.
Authorities confirmed Michael Mohn was a federal employee but did not immediately release where he worked.
A ‘call to arms’
“He is now in hell for eternity as a traitor to his country,” Justin Mohn says of his father on the video, which appeared to be filmed in a bedroom.
In the video, Mohn describes himself as the “Commander” of America’s national network of militia, which he called Mohn’s Militia — also the title of his YouTube channel — which had 15 subscribers and eight videos as of Tuesday night.
The video had more than 5,000 views before YouTube took it down, citing violations of the platform’s policy on violent and graphic content.
The video, reviewed by this news organization, includes a manifesto-style rant in which Mohn calls on his followers to take action against federal employees. It is titled “Call to Arms for American Patriots.”
Aftermath on video
After holding up his father’s severed head, he says he now controls and commands “America’s police and military,” and calls for the execution of federal employees, and puts bounties on the FBI director, the Attorney General and the Chief Supreme Court Justice.
He rails against the LGBTQ community, the Black Lives Matter movement and “terrorist organizations such as anti-fa.” He calls for the seizure of federal buildings and says federal employees should be “publicly executed for betraying their country.”