Bombshell claims in child murder trial

Justin Stein wiped back tears as he attempted to convince a jury he wasn’t responsible for killing Charlise Mutten, claiming it was the girl’s mother who shot her twice and put her body in a barrel.

But the NSW Supreme Court jury on Wednesday declared the 33-year-old a murderer.

The jury found Stein murdered Charlise, the daughter of his former fiancee Kallista Mutten, at a property owned by his parents at Mount Wilson in the NSW Blue Mountains before wrapping her body and dumping it in a barrel down an embankment near the Colo River.

He pleaded not guilty to murder but admitted to disposing of the nine-year-old’s body.

Charlise travelled to Sydney on December 21, 2021 and spent her time split between Stein’s family property at Mount Wilson and the Riviera Ski Gardens caravan park in Lower Portland about 90 minutes away.

Stein was the “last person” to see Charlise and had the opportunity to kill her between 7.16pm on January 11 and 10.06am on January 12.

On January 12, Charlise woke up sick, with Stein telling his then-partner that he left the girl in the care of a woman who arrived at the house to value items.

At 10.06am, Stein messaged Ms Mutten: “Charsey is staying put in bed, she’s wrecked and already fallen back to sleep.”

By that time, Charlise was already dead.

Stein picked up Ms Mutten and drove to Sydney, where they did drugs and had sex in Centennial Park before returning to Mount Wilson at 8.44pm to find it empty.

Charlise’s disappearance was reported to police on the morning of January 14 before her body was found dumped in a barrel near the Colo River on January 18.

Over 3½ weeks the jury heard from 48 witnesses.

We look at the 10 biggest bombshell claims and pieces of evidence heard by the jury that helped them decide Stein’s fate.

Ultimately, the jury found Stein lied, deceived others and disposed of evidence to cover up his crime.

METH AND SEX IN A PARK

Ms Mutten was a critical witness in the trial, becoming emotional when she was accused by Stein’s barrister of killing her own daughter.

Under tense cross-examination from Carolyn Davenport SC, when accused of shooting her daughter, Ms Mutten said: “Are you serious?”

The barrister asked if Ms Mutten had shot her daughter “near behind the shed” on the property.

Ms Mutten again said: “No.”

“You shot her once in the back and once in the head,” Ms Davenport continued her questioning.

Ms Mutten grabbed a tissue and started to cry when she said she “didn’t even know” Charlise was shot with a gun.

“I don’t even know where she was shot, so now I know,” Ms Mutten said through tears.

Ms Davenport told the witness that Stein claimed he saw her “deliver the second shot”.

Ms Mutten turned away from the bar table before breaking down and said: “I need a moment, I’m sorry.”

During her evidence, Ms Mutten told the jury that Stein picked her up on January 12 from the caravan park before they travelled to Surry Hills and bought $50 worth of marijuana and $100 worth of methylamphetamine, otherwise known as ice.

Stein had claimed Charlise was still alive at this point and was “laid down” in the back seat of the car, but the jury rejected this evidence.

According to Ms Mutten, the pair drove to Centennial Park and had sex in Stein’s Holden Colorado ute after injecting ice.

The court was told that while at the park, Ms Mutten searched online “blood coming from penis after sex” and “blood coming out of penis after ejaculation”.

‘GOING TO WAR’ CLAIM

Stein pretended to spend hours looking for Charlise while he drove around Sydney with her body in a barrel in the back of his ute, the jury was told.

His initial lies began when he told both Ms Mutten, his mother, and briefly police that Charlise was sick and being taken care of by an auction lady.

Stein later suggested a criminal associate from his past with “bad blood” may have been responsible for the girl’s disappearance.

The 33-year-old spent hours on the night of January 13 driving around wharves in Sydney in what prosecutors said was to dispose of the girl’s body.

While he was out, Stein lied to his mother, claiming he was “camped in the car watching” for Charlise and was “going to war” to find her.

His mother wrote: “I think Kallista has done all this and everything else at the property, lots of things not adding up.”

But Stein would later flip on Ms Mutten in his second police interview, saying he lied to police to protect his fiancee.

Stein said there were elements of his interview that were true but “some aspects” were missing.

He said the story about the auctioneer lady wasn’t “his thing” but rather a story he was told to tell by Ms Mutten.

“Kallista has been planning to take Charlise … as for where she actually is I don’t know, I didn’t know when she was going to do it,” he claimed.

Stein said Ms Mutten didn’t want to go to police initially despite his urges to contact them.

“For once I haven’t done anything wrong here and that’s the God’s honest truth,” Stein said.

“She basically dumped on me this f**king far-fetched load of sh*t … It’s like I was being hung out to f**king dry.”

SNICKERS BAR BEFORE DUMPING BARREL

After telling his partner and mother he was “going to war”, Stein left the Mount Wilson property just after 4pm on January 13

CCTV footage played to the jury shows Stein’s red Holden Colorado ute towing his boat, with a barrel in the back of the car hidden under a blue tarp.

Stein drives to Marsden Park Bunnings where he is seen on CCTV purchasing five bags of sand that would later be used to weigh down the barrel.

The jury was told Stein then travelled to 7/11 and bought a can of Coke, a Snickers bar and a slushie before filling the boat up with fuel at a nearby BP.

At the time, Charlise’s body was in the back of his ute under a tarp.

MUM’S ‘DEVO’ TEXT

Overnight on January 12, Ms Mutten was under the impression her daughter was unwell and may have been taken by an “auctioneer lady”.

After arriving at Mount Wilson at 8.44pm, she searched through bushland and checked with local hospitals to try to find her daughter.

As the night progressed, Ms Mutten went through Stein’s phone and found he had been on adult dating websites and messaging a mutual friend.

On her evidence, she then took Stein’s ute to a local campground where she sent messages “consistent with her belief the child was missing”.

“I’m devo and now my daughter is missing,” one message to a friend read.

At 3.39am, Ms Mutten sent a message calling Stein a “liar and a cheat”.

The text continued: “Now I’ve lost my daughter and I’m going to neck myself, I’m so stupid.

“I’m grabbing my daughter and taking her to my brother’s. I’m not losing her over you. I’m so stupid.”

KILLER’S OUTBURST OVER CAR

When she arrived back to Mount Wilson with the ute, Ms Mutten had a confrontation with Stein, prompting her to drive off in the car again, the jury was told.

While gone, Stein left voicemails on Ms Mutten’s phone.

“If you don’t bring it back I am going to f**king hurt you as well as everyone else, and I’ll tell the police you’re the one who took your daughter so they will bring back my f**king car,” Stein said in the recording, which was played to the jury.

The jury heard another voicemail where Stein said: “I’ve got my f**king guns and I’m going to f**king kill you now, and I’m f**king serious. You’ve f**ked me over for the last time … it was you doing this to Charlise to f**k me wasn’t it c**t, I’m going to kill you.”

In another message, Stein tells his then-fiancee that he “does the right thing” by “looking after” her before saying she is “going down dog”.

In his closing argument, Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC suggested “the stealing of the motor vehicle may have been more important to him (Stein) than the killing of the child”.

KILLER’S ‘LITTLE GIRL’ CLAIM

The jury was shown Stein’s interviews with police just hours after he had dumped Charlise’s body near a riverbank.

Through tears he told the officers that Charlise’s disappearance was “f**king killing” him.

“I don’t even know and that’s what’s f**king killing me … I feel like I’m having a constant panic attack like I can’t really breathe,” he said in the footage.

“Going off my gut I think it’s got something to do with Kallista and her family.”

In his first interview with police, Stein told them the story about an auctioneer lady having come to the property and taking care of Charlise – a story he would later claim Ms Mutten forced him to tell.

He told police they arrived at the home on January 12 to find no one there before Stein called his mother and found out some “pretty shocking information” that the real estate agent wasn’t supposed to be at the house until the following week.

Stein told police that he started to “panic” and walked around the property looking for Charlise.

About an hour into the interview he began to get emotional and broke down, saying he felt “responsible” for leaving the girl with the woman he believed was a real estate agent.

Asked if he was telling the truth, Stein said he had “no reason to lie” before the officers asked if he was involved in Charlise’s death.

“No … no … never,” he said.

“That kid really does mean the world to me, you know what I mean. I don’t have much experience but this was my chance … She was going to be my little girl.”

PRISON CALLS

The first time Stein claimed Ms Mutten had shot and killed her daughter was the day he was charged with murder – January 18, 2021, in a screening interview with a NSW Correctives officer.

The claims were repeated in prison phone calls with his mother in the weeks following.

In the first call played to the jury, Stein claimed he “couldn’t tell her everything over the phone”.

He told his mother that police had approached him asking where the murder weapon and place of death were, and they didn’t “even know anything”.

“Alleged doesn’t mean sh*t, all it means is that I’m going to beat the murder charge,” Stein said.

Throughout the calls, Stein claimed Ms Mutten is “going to get charged for everything”, telling his mother police “can’t pin him” for the murder as it “didn’t happen”.

“But then why were you travelling with the barrel?” his mother asks.

Stein claimed he thought the barrel was in his car so he could do some work on another property.

“I’m literally at Bunnings and I get a phone call saying ‘you’ve got Charlise with you’, and I went ‘what’,” the jury heard Stein say in the third phone call.

“Yeah … I was driving around with a f**king kid on the back of my ute.”

He eventually tells his mother that he “saw the murder happen” on the crown land at the back of the property.

Stein said: “Behind the shed on the fire break … I’m guessing she ran down to me to the shed because the last thing she screamed was my name and then you heard ‘Mummy, no’ and then the second gunshot.”

‘CHEEKY’ VOICE IN THE BACKGROUND

Stein’s mother took to the witness stand as a prosecution witness but her evidence was in favour of her son.

Annemie Stein told the court that she couldn’t recall phone conversations she had from the period of time, but she admitted to “definitely” remembering a phone call with Stein on the night of January 12.

“He said that he picked up Kallista and Charlise from the caravan park and that they were back in Mount Wilson and I was not happy about that at all,” Ms Stein told the jury.

“He just said ‘mum relax, it’s just for one night, tomorrow I’m taking them to Kallista’s friends’.”

She told the court that she heard someone in the background yell “Narelle it’s only one night”.

“To the best of my knowledge it was cheeky, the way it was said was cheeky, so to me that was the little girl,” Ms Stein said, referring to Charlise.

She denied claims from Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC that she made up the evidence after her son was charged with murder.

The jury was shown a police interview with police on January 14, 2021, when Ms Stein was explicitly asked if she heard anyone in the background of the call.

“No,” she answered.

The jury was told the first time Ms Stein made a statement about the background of the call was the same week she gave evidence, claiming she amended her statement because “a lot didn’t make sense”.

‘HER MUM SHOT HER TWICE’

Stein took to the witness stand for two days, defending his version of events and making claims to the jury.

He became emotional when he told the jury he “heard a gunshot” and Charlise scream his name before screaming “Mummy, no”.

Stein told the court he was working on his car in the shed when he heard a gunshot and “Charlise scream my name”.

“Then I went outside the shed … I got to the back of the shed, that’s when I heard Charlise scream ‘Mummy, no’,” Stein told the jury as he tried to hold back tears.

“That’s when I heard … bang … a second gunshot … I saw Kallista and that’s when I saw Charlise on the ground.”

Stein told the jury that he saw Ms Mutten with a .22 calibre rifle in her hands and asked her: “What the f**k have you done?”

“She looked at me and screamed at me: ‘You did this’,” Stein said.

The jury was told Ms Mutten screamed at Stein to get a tarp but he refused.

“She lifted up the rifle like she was going to shoot … I put up both hands and said OK,” Stein said.

He said he was in the shed for about 10 minutes and when he left he walked up to where they had been to find Charlise and Ms Mutten “both gone”.

GRUESOME DETAILS OF KILLING

The jury were told of the horrific way Charlise’s body was found, and she was “still alive” when she was shot in the face.

Former NSW Police crime scene officer Mitchell James told the jury that Charlise’s body was head down in the barrel in the foetal position.

She was “bound” in a number of bloodstained wrappings and black garbage bags, the court was told, while a garbage bag filled of bloodstained soil and her pink Nike slides was also in the barrel.

“The body was found in a decomposed state … a regular bullet wound was into her right cheek,” Mr James said.

Forensic pathologist Marna Du Plessis conducted a post-mortem exam on Charlise’s body after it was discovered in the barrel and told the jury the girl would have survived the shot to her left lower buttock.

“The gunshot wound to the back is not independently fatal,” Dr Du Plessis said.

She also told the jury that Charlise was still alive when she was shot in the face, with the bullet “entering her brain”.

The jury was told by forensic pharmacologist Judith Perl that Stein’s schizophrenia medication was found in Charlise’s system.

“I do however consider it possible the quetiapine may have been ingested within six hours of death due to the presence of it in the stomach of the deceased,” she said.

Stein remains in custody and will be sentenced at a later date.