(Photo Courtesy of the Carnegie Science Center)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) Voting opened this weekend for the public to pick one of three buildings to be featured in the Miniature Railroad and Village Display at the Carnegie Science Center in 2026. The buildings that have been nominated are the Andrew Bayne Memorial Library, Bethel Township High School and the Garards Fort Post Office. The online link to learn more about these buildings and to vote for them once a day through July 31st can be found below:

Click here to vote for the building you want in the 2026 Miniature Railroad and Village Display! Vote for the 2026 Miniature Railroad & Village® Model! – Carnegie Science Center

(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – Flowers rest at the front door of the Mohn residence in Upper Orchard section of Levittown, Pa., on Feb. 2, 2024. (Tyger Williams/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP, File)

(AP) A Pennsylvania man who posted a video of his father’s severed head on YouTube was convicted of murder Friday and sentenced to life without parole.

Bucks County Judge Stephen A. Corr found Justin D. Mohn, 33, guilty in the January 2024 shooting death of his father at their home in the Philadelphia suburb of Levittown.

After the sentencing, Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn told reporters Mohn had exhibited a “complete and utter lack of remorse,” calling it an “unimaginable, unfathomable crime.”

“We are satisfied that this was the right outcome to guarantee that the community at large is safe from Justin Mohn,” Schorn said.

His defense attorney called it an “undoubtedly difficult case to preside over.”

“Cases involving the loss of life are always the most difficult, and that difficulty is compounded when the prosecution seeks the death penalty. The commonwealth originally sought the death penalty in this case, and based on the defense that was presented on behalf of Mr. Mohn, my client will not face that penalty,” said Mohn’s lawyer, Steven M. Jones, in an email. He declined to comment on whether Mohn will appeal.

Prosecutors said Mohn shot his father, Michael F. Mohn, 68, with a newly purchased pistol, then decapitated him with a kitchen knife and machete. The 14-minute YouTube video he posted was live for several hours before it was removed.

Mohn testified during the trial that he shot his father while trying to arrest him on what he said were false statements and treason but his father resisted, so he fired at him. He said he severed his head to send a message to federal workers to meet his demands, which included their resignation among other things.

In victim impact statements read in court Friday, family members and others recalled Michael Mohn as a loving husband and father, a man of humility and humor who enjoyed reading, exercising and playing the guitar.

Justin Mohn was arrested later on the day of the murder after scaling a fence at Fort Indiantown Gap, the state’s National Guard headquarters. Prosecutors said he called for others to join him in attempting to overthrow the U.S. government.

Mohn had a USB device containing photos of federal buildings and apparent instructions for making explosives when he was arrested, authorities said.

He also expressed violent anti-government rhetoric in writings he published online, going back several years. During the trial, the judge heard from Justin Mohn’s mother, who said police came to the house he shared with his parents and warned him about his online postings before the killing.

Denice Mohn testified that she and her husband had been offering financial support and guidance as Justin Mohn looked for a job.

“It’s unimaginable what the defendant did to his father and to his family,” Schorn said. “I know this verdict does provide some level of justice, but it will never heal their wounds.”

He was also convicted of possession of an instrument of crime, gun charges, criminal use of a communication facility, terroristic threats, defiant trespassing, and abuse of a corpse.

Prosecutors described the homicide as “something straight out of a horror film.” They said Justin Mohn killed his father — who had been an engineer with the geoenvironmental section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Philadelphia District — to intimidate federal workers, calling it a “cold, calculated, organized plan.”

The YouTube video included rants about the government, immigration and the border, fiscal policy, urban crime and the war in Ukraine.

In the video posted on YouTube, 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 to strike a deal to give Mohn refuge and apologizing to President Vladimir Putin for claiming to be the czar of Russia. The judge ruled Mohn was competent to stand trial.

Evidence presented at the trial included graphic photos and the video posted to YouTube. The judge warned members of the public at the trial about the images and said they could leave before the photos were shown. The proceedings are known as a bench trial, with only a judge, not a jury.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE-Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, is seen shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan, March 1st, 2003, in this photo obtained by the Associated Press. (AP Photo, File) 

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided federal appeals court on Friday threw out an agreement that would have allowed accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to plead guilty in a deal sparing him the risk of execution for al-Qaida’s 2001 attacks.

The decision by a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., undoes an attempt to wrap up more than two decades of military prosecution beset by legal and logistical troubles. It signals there will be no quick end to the long struggle by the U.S. military and successive administrations to bring to justice the man charged with planning one of the deadliest attacks ever on the United States.

The deal, negotiated over two years and approved by military prosecutors and the Pentagon’s senior official for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a year ago, stipulated life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two co-defendants.

Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the hijacked planes flew into a field in Pennsylvania.

Relatives of the Sept. 11 victims were split on the plea deal. Some objected to it, saying a trial was the best path to justice and to gaining more information about the attacks, while others saw it as the best hope for bringing the painful case to a conclusion and getting some answers from the defendants.

The plea deal would have obligated the men to answer any lingering questions that families of the victims have about the attacks.

But then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin repudiated the deal, saying a decision on the death penalty in an attack as grave as Sept. 11 should only be made by the defense secretary.

Attorneys for the defendants had argued that the agreement was already legally in effect and that Austin, who served under President Joe Biden, acted too late to try to throw it out. A military judge at Guantanamo and a military appeals panel agreed with the defense lawyers.

But, by a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found Austin acted within his authority and faulted the military judge’s ruling.

The panel had previously put the agreement on hold while it considered the appeal, first filed by the Biden administration and then continued under President Donald Trump.

“Having properly assumed the convening authority, the Secretary determined that the ‘families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out.’ The Secretary acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we decline to second-guess his judgment,” judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao wrote.

Millett was an appointee of President Barack Obama while Rao was appointed by Trump.

In a dissent, Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, wrote, “The government has not come within a country mile of proving clearly and indisputably that the Military Judge erred.”

Brett Eagleson, who was among the family members who objected to the deal, called Friday’s appellate ruling “a good win, for now.”

“A plea deal allows this to be tucked away into a nice, pretty package, wrapped into a bow and put on a shelf and forgotten about,” said Eagleson, who was 15 when his father, shopping center executive John Bruce Eagleson, was killed in the attacks.

Brett Eagleson was unmoved by the deal’s provisions for the defendants to answer Sept. 11 families’ questions; he wonders how truthful the men would be. In his view, “the only valid way to get answers and seek the truth is through a trial” and pretrial fact-finding.

Elizabeth Miller, who was 6 when the attacks killed her father, firefighter Douglas Miller, was among those who supported the deal.

“Of course, growing up, a trial would have been great initially,” she said. But “we’re in 2025, and we’re still at the pretrial stage.”

“I just really don’t think a trial is possible,” said Miller, who also favored the deal because of her opposition to the death penalty in general.

(Photo of four-year-old Quinn Landry of Industry courtesy of her parents, Janeen and Shane Landry)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Industry, PA) A Beaver County Jr. Ranger has now moved on to the semi-finals of the National Wildlife Federation’s Jr. Ranger competition as of Saturday. Four-year-old Quinn Landry of Industry made it past the quarterfinal round of this competition. The winner will be in Ranger Rick magazine and will get a prize of $20,000. You can vote for Quinn to win this round until Thursday, July 17th at 10 p.m. The online link to vote for Quinn can be found at the link below. Quinn made it to the quarterfinal round of this competition on July 1st, 2025. Quinn absolutely loves all kinds of wildlife, nature and especially bugs. Quinn also got to meet a park ranger at Keystone State Park. August 8th will be the date when the winner of this competition is announced.

https://jr-ranger.org/2025/quinn-6087.