The man accused of murdering Charlise Mutten has wept in court as he claimed she was shot by her own mother, and given his version of the schoolgirl’s final moments.
Justin Stein told the jury in his murder trial at the NSW Supreme Court that Kallista Mutten shot her daughter in the face and back before screaming at him: ‘You made me do this.’
Stein said he had been on his family property when he heard a shot ring out and Charlise scream his name then cry out ‘Mummy, no’ before a second shot.
‘I walked up to the fence. That’s when I saw Charlise on the ground. (Kallista) had a rifle in her hand,’ he told the court from the witness stand on Monday.
‘I said, “What the f*** have you done?” and she started screaming “You did this”. She kept screaming “You did this” she then screamed “You made me do this”.
Charlise Mutten, 9, was on holiday from her home near Tweed Heads when she was allegedly murdered with a shotgun wound to the head and her body dumped in a barrel
‘She screamed at me to get a tarp. I said “no”. She then lifted up the rifle as if to shoot. I put up both hands.’
Stein said he then went into a shed and found a blue tarpaulin after about 10 minutes, but when he came out, both Kallista and Charlise were gone.
He said he saw a ’20cm black square cut out of the dirt’ before walking back to the main house at his family’s Wildenstein property, at Mount Wilson in the NSW Blue Mountains.
‘I went… straight to my bedroom… sitting there shaking, rolled myself a joint, broke down in tears for 10 to 15 minutes, stopped crying, smoked that joint, fell asleep,’ he said.
Stein gave his dramatic account of events about an hour after taking the stand to testify at his trial for the alleged murder of the nine-year-old schoolgirl.
Wearing a grey suit, cream shirt and dark tie and sporting a beard and moustache, the accused entered the witness box at 10.07am.
Stein, 34, has denies murdering Charlise, but admits disposing of her body.
Stein is alleged to have concealed the child’s body in a plastic barrel and dumped it 50km away on the banks of the Colo River.
He admitted in court to taking heroin since the age of 12 and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 21.
Justin Stein is on trial accused of the murder of Charlise Mutten. The 33-year-old has pleaded not guilty to the January 2022 shooting death
He said he first met Ms Mutten in jail at Kempsey on the NSW Mid North Coast and the pair had started seeing each other when they got out of jail.
Charlise was visiting Ms Mutten and himself during the 2021/22 school holidays, and spent time in NSW between Wildenstein and Riviera Ski Gardens caravan park in Lower Portland where Stein owned a van.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC has alleged that 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.
But in his testimony on Monday, Stein said the child was shot dead on the evening of January 12, by her mother.
He also claimed Charlise had been ill and vomiting after her mother had given the child his schizophrenia medication.
Mr Stein said that during their ‘very up and down’ relationship, Ms Mutten had constantly taken methamphetamine and ‘get very paranoid’.
‘She’d … think people are trying to kill her, poison her, she’d worry about drones’ and ‘dshe was always paranoid that the house was bugged’.
He said that Charlise arrived for her holiday, things had become ‘more voltile’ between himself and Kallista who ‘almost became jealous at times’ of the ‘good relationship’ he had with the girl.
He said that he planned to end their romance after Charlise had returned from her holiday back to Queensland, but had also planned on getting married to Kallista.
Mr Stein told the court that he hadn’t known Charlise’s body was in the barrel in the back of his ute until night time and that when he discovered it there he ‘threw up’
He said he ‘paid for everything’ in the relationship from money saved and his disability pension for his schizophnrenia.
During the Charlise’s holiday he and Kallista ‘had a big fight she then starting cutting herself, then threatening to end her own life’, but that he had also Googled about marriage and adoption cerificates and ‘there was still part of me that loved her and thought she could change’.
On January 12, by which time the trial prosecutors allege that Charlise was already dead, Mr Stein said the girl was sleeping in his ute along with his hunting dog, Dozer.
He agreed that he had driven to Sydney to buy ice and cannabis, but disputed that he and Kallista had then gone to Cenetnnial Park to have sex, saying instead he ‘walking the dog while she was shooting up ice in the toilets’.
Charlise, 9, was allegedly shot dead at the Stein family property at Mount Wilson and then her remains place in a barrel in the back of Mr Stein’s red Holden Colorado ute and dumped on the the riverbank
He said that on the Thursday, January 13 – which Mr Stein says is the day after he claims Kallista shot Charlise, but which prosecutors allege is two or more days after the child’s death – he left Wildenstein believing he had an empty barrel in his ute.
‘It was completely empy. I loaded everything up. I used two ratchet straps,’ he said, describing the work he planned to carry out that day at his cabin at Lower Portland caravan park.
Mr Stein told the court it was night time, and he had smoked cannabis and bought ice for Ms Mutten at Drummoyne boat ramp, when he says he finally learnt Charlise’s body was in the barrel on his ute.
He said the tarpaulin over the barrel had come loose and after pulling over to fix it, ‘ I noticed the ratchet straps … were upside down.
‘I undid the straps … pulling it, I tipped the barrel. That’s when I saw Charlise wrapped in a blue tarp in the barrel. I threw up.’
Mr Stein said that on the Friday morning – January 14, 2021 – when he had showered and dressed, Kallista Mutten had returned to Mount Wilson and was sitting in the living room, watching TV.
‘I started abusing her telling her (she was) a piece of s**t, a putrid dog for what she did. I’ll never forget this, she smiled.’
He said he then ‘threw’ the ice he had purchased for her ‘in her face. She started shooting up.’
The court has earlier heard that after Charlise’s body was retrieved from the banks of the Colo River, forensic examiners found she had two gunshot wounds, with one to her face proving fatal.
The prosecution told the court Stein and Ms Mutten ‘broke into a house at Mount Wilson’ and stole two firearms, one of which he said is ‘of importance in the case’ and for the charge of murder.
It is alleged that a .22 calibre bolt-action rifle was the murder weapon.
Charlise was living with her grandparents in Tweed Heads before travelling south to spend time with her mother and Stein from December 21.
Kallista Mutten, an ice addict, had met Justin Stein when they were both serving prison sentences for drug-related offences and continued their relationship on release
Ms Mutten called Triple-0 at 8.15am on January 14, 2022 and reported her daughter missing.
The trial before Justice Helen Wilson continues.
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