Penn State Alumnus Accused of Decapitating Father in Bucks County

A Penn State alumnus was charged with first-degree murder Tuesday night in Bucks County after he allegedly decapitated his father and displayed the severed head in a video uploaded to YouTube.

Justin Mohn, 32, is also charged with abuse of a corpse and possessing an instrument of a crime for beheading his 68-year-old father, Michael Mohn, a retired civil engineer.

The younger Mohn graduated from Penn State’s University Park campus in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in agribusiness management.

In the graphic, 14-minute video, Mohn shared right-wing conspiracy theories, called his father, who was a federal employee, a “traitor,” and expressed anger toward “far-left woke mobs” and the government. Mohn retrieved his father’s head from a pot in his family’s Levittown home and displayed it in the video uploaded to YouTube before his arrest.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Middletown Township police responded to the suburban Philadelphia home around 7 p.m. and found Michael Mohn in a “large amount of blood” and a machete and a large kitchen knife life in the bathtub, according to the criminal complaint. The elder Mohn’s head was wrapped in a plastic bag in a pot, and bloody rubber gloves were found in the home.

Mohn was arrested at 9 p.m. on Tuesday nearly 100 miles away in Fort Indiantown Gap at the Pennsylvania National Guard headquarters.

In 2022, Mohn filed a lawsuit seeking $10 million from the U.S. Department of Education for failing to warn him of the risks of taking out a student loan, according to court records He claimed he failed to find employment eight years after graduating because employers perceived him “as an overeducated, white male” and blamed affirmative action laws for costing him job opportunities, according to court records.

It and three similar lawsuits filed over the following year against other government agencies were all dismissed.

Geoff Rushton contributed to this report.