The Justin Mohn beheading case ended on July 11, 2025, when Bucks County Common Pleas Judge Stephen Corr convicted the 33-year-old Pennsylvania man of first-degree murder and terrorism for shooting and decapitating his father, Michael Mohn, in the family’s Levittown home on January 30, 2024, and posting a YouTube video that displayed the severed head and called for attacks on federal employees. Judge Corr sentenced him the same day to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It was the first conviction ever secured under Pennsylvania’s terrorism statute.
What Happened on January 30, 2024
Justin Mohn, then 32, shot his 68-year-old father inside their home on Upper Orchard Drive in Middletown Township with a 9mm Sig Sauer handgun he had bought the day before at a shop in Bristol Township. He then decapitated Michael Mohn with a kitchen knife and a machete and left the body in a first-floor bathroom. His mother, Denice Mohn, discovered her husband and called 911. A neighbor, James Carnley, told the dispatcher the victim had been decapitated.
After filming and posting the video described below, Mohn fled in his father’s 2009 Toyota Corolla and drove more than 100 miles to Fort Indiantown Gap, the Pennsylvania National Guard’s training center in Lebanon County. Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn later said he intended to convince Guard troops to “raise arms against the federal government,” and he also told authorities he wanted to speak with Governor Josh Shapiro “to join forces.” Newly installed gates blocked him from driving onto the base, so he scaled a fence on foot. Base police and Pennsylvania State Police took him into custody near the main office shortly before 10 p.m., without incident. He was still armed with the handgun used in the killing. The installation was locked down during the search, affecting staff and 45 students at the Keystone Challenge Academy.
He was transported back to Bucks County and arraigned at 4 a.m. on charges including first-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, and possession of an instrument of crime, and was held without bail.
The YouTube Video
The video, titled “Mohn’s Militia – Call To Arms For American Patriots,” ran more than 14 minutes. Mohn wore gloves and displayed his father’s head first in a plastic bag and then in a cooking pot. He identified his father by name, called him a “traitor” for his two decades of federal employment, and urged “all militia and patriots across the United States to kill all federal employees.” He named specific federal officials he said should be “captured and publicly executed,” including a U.S. District Court judge whose address he read aloud. He also attacked the Biden administration, the Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQ community, and antifascist activists.
The video went up around 10 p.m. and drew roughly 5,000 views before YouTube removed it about five hours later for violating its graphic violence policy. YouTube also terminated Mohn’s channel under its violent extremism policies. A clip circulated on X for at least seven hours and drew about 20,000 views before removal.
Who Michael Mohn Was
Michael F. Mohn grew up in the Levittown area and spent most of his career as a scientist and engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Philadelphia District, which he joined in 2001. He started as a chemist and moved into wastewater treatment engineering, held five patents from earlier work at a private environmental firm, and received the Philadelphia District’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 2019. His projects included testing hazardous samples at the Lipari Landfill Superfund site and upgrading a southern New Jersey facility that handled radioactive soil from the Manhattan Project. He retired in 2022 and returned part-time soon after.
He was married to Denice for nearly 40 years, had two sons and a daughter, played guitar, followed the Flyers and Eagles, and played ice hockey into his 50s. Colleagues described the couple as “selfless, devoted parents.”
Justin Mohn’s Grievances and Writings
Mohn graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 2014 with a degree in agribusiness management and then struggled to find steady work, a grievance that became the center of his worldview. He moved to Colorado around 2015 and worked at a credit union and later an insurance firm. After being fired from the insurance company, he unsuccessfully sued the employer. He sued Progressive Insurance in 2018 alleging gender-based job discrimination; a federal judge ruled against him and the Tenth Circuit rejected his appeal.
He then turned on the federal government itself. In March 2022 he sued the Department of Education and its secretary for $10 million, claiming he had been negligently and fraudulently induced to take on student loan debt without warning about job prospects. The case was dismissed. He filed a second suit in August 2022 and a third in 2023, both also dismissed. In his filings he blamed employers’ “perception of him as an overeducated, white male” and what he called affirmative action directed against him.
Starting around 2015, Mohn began self-publishing books with increasingly violent and conspiratorial themes. Titles included The Revolution Leader’s Survival Guide, The Second Messiah: King of Earth, and a pamphlet, America’s Coming Bloody Revolution, which described an “inevitable” violent uprising and suggested anyone born before 1991 should be killed as a “traitor.” The pamphlet also contained descriptions of killing his own family members. His final book, The Punishing, was published in late 2023 and was described as his “shortest and most violent.”
Analysts characterized his ideology as “salad bar extremism,” a mix of hate-based frameworks rather than alignment with a single movement, drawing on elements of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, anti-government grievance, and hostility toward immigrants, LGBTQ people, and Black Lives Matter. The FBI investigated four tips about his social media activity between 2018 and the crime but found no evidence of illegal activity or imminent threats each time. As recently as six months before the murder, federal authorities investigated him over a threat against a U.S. District Court judge and closed the case that same month.
The Gun Purchase
Mohn bought the Sig Sauer 9mm the day before the killing at a shop in Bristol Township. To become legally eligible, he voluntarily surrendered his medical marijuana card days beforehand, which prosecutors would later point to as evidence of premeditation. District Attorney Schorn said Mohn had “no history of diagnosed mental health issues” and no record of psychiatric commitment, so nothing in the background check flagged him. Digital forensics presented at trial showed he had searched online for information on handgun bullet lethality and methods for quick gun purchases before buying the weapon.
Competency Ruling
On August 1, 2024, after a nearly five-hour hearing, Judge Corr ruled Mohn competent to stand trial.
The defense’s expert, forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Markey, testified that Mohn suffered from a “delusional disorder,” citing his beliefs that he was the “messiah” and a “King David-like figure” being persecuted by the federal government, and that his public defender was a federal agent. The prosecution’s expert, forensic psychologist Dr. Kelly Chamberlain, testified she found Mohn “intelligent, calm and socially appropriate” and characterized his unusual statements as “political rhetoric and extremist” beliefs rather than symptoms of psychosis. Mohn himself told the court he understood the charges, how the court system worked, and that conviction could bring the death penalty or life without parole. At the same hearing, Judge Corr granted his request to dismiss his public defender and appoint new counsel.
The Trial
The bench trial ran roughly five days in early July 2025 before Judge Corr in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas. Mohn waived his right to a jury. First Assistant District Attorney Edward Louka led the prosecution, with District Attorney Schorn overseeing. Fifteen criminal charges were in front of the court, including first-degree and second-degree murder and two counts of terrorism.
Prosecutors called the killing a “cold, calculated, organized plan” intended to intimidate federal workers. Forensic evidence showed Michael Mohn had no defensive wounds and no blood on his hands, contradicting his son’s claim of a physical struggle. Analysis indicated the victim was shot in the head immediately after using the bathroom; his pants were unbuttoned and the toilet unflushed. Bucks County Detective Eric Landamia testified about material recovered from Mohn’s phone and computer, including search histories on bomb-making, blueprints of federal buildings, and research on Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Investigators also found what they described as a “battle plan” with instructions for building explosives and chlorine bombs. The court heard the 911 audio, which included screaming in the background. Denice Mohn testified about finding her husband and about the family’s efforts to support Justin financially while he looked for work, describing the father-son relationship as normal.
Mohn delivered his own opening statement and testified for about 90 minutes. Judge Corr gave him a final opportunity to raise an insanity defense; he declined, saying, “I do not wish to use a mental health defense.”
He instead cast the killing as a “citizen’s arrest gone awry.” He testified that he had planned to apprehend his father for “treason” or kill him if he resisted. The alleged treason, he said, was that his father had told a judge Mohn was “mentally ill like Donald Trump,” undermining his federal lawsuit. He claimed his father was a “martial arts expert” who threatened him and tried to grab the handgun, forcing him to use deadly force, and compared himself to a police officer acting in self-defense.
On the beheading, Mohn said he severed his father’s head for “purely practical reasons,” testifying that “I knew a severed head would go viral and would reduce violence” by frightening federal employees into resigning. He called himself a “patriot” and said his actions were meant to spark a revolution. Under cross-examination, Louka asked whether Michael Mohn would still be alive had he not resisted arrest. Mohn replied, “I presume so.” When Louka called the act murder, Mohn corrected him: “I would object to calling it a murder.” Defense attorney Steven Jones drew out that Mohn’s “militia” consisted of only himself and that he had been “unable to recruit anyone to join his cause.”
Verdict and Sentence
On July 11, 2025, Judge Corr found Mohn guilty of 12 of the 15 charges, including first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and both counts of terrorism. He was acquitted of charges related to the theft of his father’s vehicle. It was the first conviction under Pennsylvania’s terrorism statute. Judge Corr rejected the self-defense and citizen’s arrest claims, crediting the forensic evidence that showed no struggle. He called the actions “unspeakable,” pointed to the cruelty inflicted on family members who had given Mohn “unconditional love and support,” and observed, “There is some mental infirmity. Somewhere this went off the rails,” describing the case as “an indictment of the mental health system.”
Sentencing followed the same day. Denice Mohn wrote that she had lost both a husband and a son that night; she and Michael had planned to celebrate their 40th anniversary in June 2025 and had dreamed of traveling to Ireland. She asked the judge to make sure her son could never hurt anyone else or “spread his hateful ideology.” Zachary Mohn called his father “the ultimate everyman” and his “greatest benefactor and advocate,” noting the family had continued supporting Justin because Michael believed “he needed to support his son.” Stephanie Smith, Michael’s daughter, described the horror of knowing the video had been filmed in her childhood bedroom and said holidays were now “ruined.” David Mohn, Michael’s brother, said he had been expecting Michael to fly to Florida for his 70th birthday the day after the murder. “I miss the phone calls,” he wrote.
Judge Corr imposed life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. District Attorney Schorn said the verdict provided “some level of justice” but added, “it will never heal their wounds,” and said the terrorism conviction was secured because Mohn had used his father’s death as a “political statement.”
Appeal
Mohn filed a post-sentence motion challenging the weight of the evidence and arguing that the killing was “justified and therefore lawful.” The trial court denied it, and he appealed to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.
On March 2, 2026, a three-judge Superior Court panel affirmed the conviction and sentence. President Superior Court Judge Anne E. Lazarus wrote that Mohn had waived his appellate claims by conflating challenges to the “sufficiency” of the evidence with challenges to the “weight” of the evidence in his brief, a procedural error under established case law. Justin Mohn remains in state prison without the possibility of parole.