Denise Mohn had no warning for what she found when she returned home from work in January 2024.
“I did not see this coming,” she said Monday, on the first day of the murder trial for her son, Justin Mohn, who garnered international attention with the killing of his own father, beheading him and showing the aftermath in YouTube video calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government.
Hours before she found her husband’s headless body on the bathroom floor, he and 33-year-old son, Justin, had lunch in their Levittown home. There was no sign of any tensions between father and son. They had a normal relationship, aside from the nuisances that can arise when adult children live at home.
The day before, Justin asked to use his father’s car to attend a job interview at the Oxford Valley Mall.
“We were so happy he was going on an interview,” Denise Mohn said. “We were hoping for a brighter future for him. Happiness.”
But instead of a bright future Justin Mohn is facing the possibility of life in prison for the murder of Michael Mohn, 68. His defense attorney Stephen Jones confirmed Monday that the death penalty is off on the table for Mohn who faces a long list of charges including first and second-degree murder, and 13 other felony and misdemeanor offenses including three terrorism related charges.
But Jones declined to say if his client plans to testify during the defense portion of the trial, which is expected to end Wednesday.
Both the prosecution and defense are under a gag order until the penalty portion of the case.
Bucks County Common Pleas Judge Stephen Corr will decide the case against Mohn, an unemployed college graduate and self-published author and musician.
Mohn is accused of killing Michael Mohn before recording a video posted to YouTube calling for a militia to overthrow the federal government and illegally entering a national military base in central Pennsylvania.
Mohn is accused of shooting his father in the head, killing him in the bathroom of the family’s Upper Orchard home. He then allegedly removed his father’s head, which he displayed in a near 15-minute video he recorded and posted on YouTube on Jan. 30, 2024.
A photo of the victim, Michael Mohn, displayed during the press conference about the Mohn murder case at the Bucks County Justice Center in Doylestown on Friday, Feb.2, 2024. Daniella Heminghaus | Bucks County Courier Times
Denise Mohn was the prosecution’s first witness. She testified she and her husband first became aware of Justin’s extreme anti-government beliefs after two Bensalem detectives visited their home over posts Justin made on social media.
”It was a red flag that went up,” she said.
Mohn also testifed that she and her husband noticed a change in Justin’s personality in 2019, after he returned home from Colorado where he lived for four years. ”He wasn’t the same person,” Mohn said, through tears. “I don’t think he was happy.”
She added that he appeared to blame the federal government for his lack of career success. But other than his extreme political beliefs, nothing about her son suggested he was capable of the violence he is accused of. She described Justin as “pretty passive.”
Throughout his mother’s testimony, Mohn, wearing a brown ill-fitting suit, appeared unemotional.
In the now deleted YouTube video, which was played in court, Mohn identified himself as “commander of America’s national network of militias” and ordered his followers to seize control of all federal law enforcement offices and federal courthouses.
He called for the capture, torture and murder of federal employees like his father, a retired civil engineer for the Army Corp of Engineers.
After allegedly killing his father and posting the video, Mohn stole his father’s car and drove Fort Indiantown Gap, home of the National Guard Training Center, where he was apprehended two hours after he scaled a 20-foot barbed wire topped fence around the base, according to authorities.
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Authorities also said that Mohn told them he went to the military base to look for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro so he could convince him to “join forces” with him in his planned coup.
When he was apprehended, Mohn allegedly had a loaded 9-millimeter handgun, which he legally purchased the day before, and a flash drive containing photos of federal buildings and instructions that appear to show how to make explosive devices along with other survival gear and books.
In writings, including several failed lawsuits where he represented himself, Mohn repeatedly complained that his status as an “overeducated white man” was keeping him from achieving his dream of financial security as a fantasy-fiction writer and musician.
During the decade after his 2014 graduation from Penn State, Mohn held a series of short-term, low-paying jobs that left him struggling. He also self-published a violent dystopian anti-government series of books and music CDs with similar themes.
Last year Corr found Mohn was mentally fit to stand trial. In hearing testimony it was revealed that Mohn believes he is mentally stable and he strongly objected to his first attorney mounting a mental illness defense.
At his preliminary hearing last year his attorney argued the terrorism charges he initially faced should be dismissed because there was no evidence his client is the head of a militia or has any authority to command people.
Following his preliminary hearing, Mohn told reporters that he was attempting a “citizen’s arrest” of his father and stated that it was “lawful” to use deadly force in the situation.
Check back for more on this developing story and for continuing court coverage.
Reporter Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at jciavaglia@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Justin Mohn of Levittown goes on trial for killing, beheading dad