Neighbours reveal disturbing behaviour of man accused of decapitating father in unhinged YouTube video

‘He’s been ranting and railing about the government for 10 years now,’ a childhood friend of Justin Mohn told NBC

Neighbours of a Pennsylvania man who posted a video ranting about the federal government while he held his father’s severed head have said he is prone to conspiracy theories.

Justin Mohn, 32, is facing charges of first-degree murder and abusing a corpse after he allegedly beheaded his 68-year-old father, Michael, in their Bucks County home and publicized it in a 14-minute video that was available online for six hours before it was taken down.

Police said the YouTube video, which has not been independently reviewed by The Independent, showed Mr Mohn picking up his father’s decapitated head while he read from a script and railed about the government, the Black Lives Matter movement and LGBTQ+ people. Mr Mohn also claimed his father had worked in the federal government for 20 years and labelled him a “traitor” — it has since been reported that Michael Mohn was an engineer for the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Michael Prickett, a childhood friend of Mr Mohn, told NBC that Mr Mohn was openly critical of the government and had “gone off the rails” after going to college.

“He’s been ranting and railing about the government for 10 years now and how they’re out to get him and how he should be president — all the crazy stuff that was said on the video last night,” Mr Pricket said. “He’s been essentially doing that for 10 years now.”

A former roommate of Mr Mohn, Davis Rebhan, also told NBC that Mr Mohn had a reputation for “telling tall tales” and was very open about conspiracy theories he believed in. On one occasion, Mr Mohn gave Mr Rebhan a book he had authored about “a high schooler who turns into a rap star who leads a revolution against the United States government.”

“He broke a big, old mirror that was in our kitchen that had been put up by the apartment, and there were holes in the walls,” Mr Rebha, who lived with Mr Mohn in Colorado Springs in 2016, said. “He basically told me he blacked out and had an incident.”

Mr said he watched the disturbing video Mr Mohn reportedly posted on YouTube.

“I watched the whole video with my mouth wide open. I came to tears over it,” he told NBC. “The kid I remember as a kid was not the kid I saw in the video last night.”

Police said Michael Mohn’s wife, Denice Mohn, arrived home and found the body about 7 pm Tuesday.

Responding officers found Michael Mohn’s body in the first-floor bathroom and his head inside a plastic bag in a kitchen pot placed in a first-floor bedroom, according to a police affidavit. Officers said they found bloody rubber gloves in a bedroom on the second floor.

Denice Mohn said her husband’s white Toyota Corolla and her son were both missing.

Mr Mohn was driving his father’s car when police took him into custody without incident.

Mr Mohn, who also was arrested on a weapons possession charge, was arraigned early Wednesday and held without bail. He is scheduled for a hearing on 8 February.