Suspect accused of killing and beheading his father bought a gun the previous day, prosecutor says

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The man accused of shooting and decapitating his father in their home northeast of Philadelphia and posting a video of the severed head on social media purchased a gun the previous day, the county prosecutor said Friday.

At a news conference in Doylestown, Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said Justin D. Mohn was “acting with clear mind” when he allegedly killed his father and then drove about two hours to a Pennsylvania National Guard training center, where he was arrested. She said an autopsy showed that his father had been shot in the head before he was decapitated with a knife and machete.

Mohn, 32, was arrested late Tuesday at Fort Indiantown Gap. His mother discovered the remains of her husband, Michael F. Mohn, in the Levittown home where the three lived together.

Justin Mohn's video, which was taken down by YouTube after several hours, included rants about the government, a theme he also embraced with violent rhetoric in writings he published online going back several years.

Michael Mohn worked as an engineer with the geoenvironmental section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Philadelphia District.

Justin Mohn faces charges of first-degree murder, abusing a corpse and possession of instruments of crime. He is being held without bail. A woman answering the phone at the Bucks County Office of the Public Defender said Friday that they were representing him and said the office declined further comment.

In the YouTube video, Justin Mohn picked up his father's head and identified him. Police said it appeared he was reading from a script as he encouraged violence against government officials and called his father a 20-year federal employee and a traitor. He also espoused a variety of conspiracy theories and rants about the Biden administration, immigration and the border, fiscal policy, urban crime and the war in Ukraine.

Police said Denice Mohn arrived at their home in the suburb of Levittown about 7 p.m. Tuesday and found her husband's body, but her son and a vehicle were missing. A machete and bloody rubber gloves were at the scene, according to a police affidavit.

In August 2020, Mohn wrote that people born in or after 1991 — his own birth year — should carry out a “bloody revolution.”

Mohn apparently drove his father’s car to Fort Indiantown Gap in central Pennsylvania and was arrested. Cellphone signals helped locate him, according to Angela Watson, communications director for the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. Watson said he was on foot and had a gun when he was apprehended.

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Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.