(Headline USA) The mother of a Pennsylvania man accused of shooting and beheading his father described from the witness stand on Monday that she found Michael F. Mohn’s body in a first-floor bathroom.
“I believe I screamed,” Denice Mohn said through tears as Justin D. Mohn’s murder trial began in a suburban Philadelphia courtroom. “I was screaming out front. I think I dialed 911.”
She testified she saw her husband when she had been home for lunch earlier. “I said goodbye,” she said. “And I said I’ll see you later.”
Justin Mohn, 33, is accused of killing his father and posting video of his severed head online — and calling for others to help him try to overthrow the U.S. government. He faces charges of murder, abuse of a corpse, terrorism related crimes and other offenses for the January 2024 killing of his father at the Levittown home where the three lived.
Denice Mohn testified that she and her husband had been offering financial support and guidance as Justin Mohn looked for a job. She described her husband’s relationship with him as a “father-son relationship.”
During the first few hours of trial, Prosecutors played 911 audio calls from the night Michael Mohn was killed, with a woman screaming in the background. The judge heard neighbor James Carnley testify about helping Denice Mohn after she found her husband. Carnley told a dispatcher that Michael Mohn had no head. Prosecutors played the YouTube video in which Justin Mohn held up his father’s severed head.
Prosecutors described the homicide as “something straight out of a horror film,” and said in an opening statement that Justin Mohn killed his father to intimidate federal workers, calling it a “cold, calculated, organized plan.”
Mohn’s defense attorneys declined to give an opening statement.
Prosecutors have said Justin Mohn shot his father with a newly purchased pistol, then decapitated him with a kitchen knife and machete. The 14-minute YouTube video was live for several hours before it was removed.
Mohn was armed with a handgun when arrested later that day after allegedly climbing a 20-foot fence at Fort Indiantown Gap, the state’s National Guard headquarters. He had hoped to get the soldiers to “mobilize the Pennsylvania National Guard to raise arms against the federal government,” Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said at a news conference last year.
According to law enforcement’s criminal complaint, investigators executed a search warrant at Mohn’s house on Feb. 6, 2024, finding a flash drive with a folder labeled, “fucked up shit.” That folder included several pictures of federal buildings along with instructions showing the steps needed to make an explosive device.
The criminal complaint also revealed that Mohn travelled to a National Guard base after murdering his father. There, he was taken into custody, the complaint said. Mohn’s father was an engineer with the geoenvironmental section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In the video, Justin Mohn described his father as a 20-year federal employee and called him a traitor.
During a competency hearing last year, a defense expert said Mohn wrote a letter to Russia’s ambassador to the United States seeking a deal to give Mohn refuge and apologizing to President Vladimir Putin for claiming to be the czar of Russia.
Liberal media outlets have politicized Mohn’s crimes by pointing to his interest in militias and his anti-government YouTube rant.
CNN, for example, focused on Mohn’s “anti-Biden rant” while the New York Post referenced Q-Anon in its headline.
However, internet sleuths were quick to note that Mohn was anti-Trump.
Mohn, of course, displayed signals of severe mental illness. In his YouTube rant, which was pulled offline, he declared himself the rightful President. He also said multiple donors and politicians sought to have him be a presidential candidate ahead of the 2020 elections, but those efforts were thwarted because the U.S. government knew he was looked at as a potential “Mosiah.”
There is no publicly available evidence for any of his claims, and it appears that he was the only member of his own militia.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
