The mother of Charlise Mutten has broken her silence about having drug-fuelled sex with the man who killed her daughter days after he committed the despicable act.
Nine-year-old Charlise was brutally murdered by her mother Kallista Mutten’s then-fiance Justin Stein at his family’s lavish home in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney in January 2022.
Stein was sentenced to life in jail without parole in August after being found guilty of shooting the girl in the head and dumping her in a barrel.
In her first ever television interview which aired on Sunday night, Ms Mutten said Stein took her on a trip to Sydney to buy drugs after killing her daughter.
Stein lied to the mother and said he had taken Charlise to stay with a family friend near the Stein home to take care of her while she was sick.
The couple bought and used the drugs before having sex in a park with Ms Mutten unaware that her fiance at the time was plotting to dump her daughter’s body.
‘It makes me sick to think about after what he has done,’ she told 60 Minutes.
‘I don’t go into that like because it makes me physically feel sick.
‘At the time, of course, I believed that she was in good hands and she was with a family friend.’
The mother of slain schoolgirl Charlise Mutten, Kallista Mutten (pictured), has broken her silence after her fiance was found guilty of murdering the nine-year-old
While saying she is ‘not the monster’ she has been portrayed as, Ms Mutten said she understands why many Aussies judged her as a parent for her drug use.
‘I didn’t commit any murder or anything like that but I do take accountability of the things that I have done,’ she said.
‘I wish I’d have been there more for her, I see that now and I’ve got to live with that.
‘Charlise deserved more.’
Ms Mutten recalled the last time she saw her daughter was just after playing in the pool while on holiday on the Hawkesbury River.
The mother allowed Charlise to leave with the man she trusted enough to call ‘Daddy’ to return to his family’s home.
She ‘didn’t think anything’ of her decision at the time, which she now deeply regrets.
‘That was the last time I saw her, I wish I had said no,’ Ms Mutten said while fighting back tears.
That night, Stein spent hours on dating websites and watching pornography while Charlise was at the home with him before making the shocking decision to kill her.
Ms Mutten’s partner, Justin Stein (both pictured), brutally shot the young girl in the face while on his family’s lavish Blue Mountains property in January 2022
Stein told the mother that Charlise (both pictured) was sick and staying with a family friend while he was plotting to dump her body
Police found she had been drugged with Stein’s schizophrenia medication before she run from the property and was shot in the hip and face.
Stein then dumped the weapons and the girls body before returning to Ms Mutten to tell her she was with the family friend.
Alarm bells rang after the couple returned to the friend’s home to retrieve Charlise, only for them to find no trace of her.
Ms Mutten called hospitals before police to report her missing, sparking a large search effort, while Stein gave her a foreboding warning.
‘I thought maybe she’s taken Charlie’s to a hospital because she was unwell, so I was on the phone ringing multiple hospitals,’ she said.
‘He said: ‘she’s not going to be there. You’re not going to find her’.’
Ms Mutten said she feels ‘physically sick’ when recalling the drug-fuelled sex she had with Stein while unaware the monster had killed her little girl
Stein had been trying to delay the mother contacting police to buy himself time to dump her body in a barrel he bought from Bunnings soon after killing her
Stein was pictured purchasing a barrel and bags of sand from Bunnings to stuff Charlise’s body into in the following days while others had hopes of finding her alive.
To buy himself more time, he told Ms Mutten that Charlise had been kidnapped by a drug dealer of his and he was going on a mission to rescue her.
He warned that if the mother contacted police, the criminals would ‘shoot her’ because they were ‘dangerous people’.
‘This all lies, all lies, everything was lies, but I held on to that hope that she was okay,’ Ms Mutten said.
Instead of rescuing the girl, Stein was captured on CCTV footage driving his ute around Sydney with the barrel under a tarpaulin strapped to the tray.
Police believe he was searching for a place to dump the girl and stopped at a docking ramp in Drummoyne for several hours to, in his own admission, smoke cannabis.
Investigators pieced together his 12-hour-long drive to and from Sydney before noticing the barrel missing from the ute upon his arrival back in the Blue Mountains.
Investigators found the barrel and Charlise’s body in subsequent searches of the Blue Mountains and arrested him for murdering the young girl that same day
Searches along the route uncovered the barrel and the heartwrenching discovery of Charlise’s body inside.
Stein was arrested at his family’s home that same day.
‘I just screamed and just said ‘no, no’,’ Ms Mutten said.
‘I never was told how many times she’d been shot. I never was told where she was shot.
‘The thought of what she had would have gone through, that’s what breaks me.’
Stein attempted to pin the murder onto his fiancee during an interview with police and again while testifying in court.
He had already admitted to disposing of the corpse, but claimed Ms Mutten shot her daughter, secretly placed Charlise’s body in the barrel and secured it on the back of his ute without his knowledge.
However, after deliberating for 35 hours over eight days, a jury found Justin Stein guilty of Charlise’s murder.
‘As soon as I found out that he was saying I did it, that’s when I knew that he’d done this,’ Ms Mutten said.
Despite trying to pin the death on his fiancee, Stein was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in August
‘That was another horrible moment that I’ve let this person in and trusted and believed everything that he told me.’
Justice Helen Wilson said Stein likely shot the girl once in the back while she was trying to flee, before approaching her and firing another shot directly into her head.
‘This was a shockingly callous crime,’ Ms Wilson said.
‘The offender approached Charlise and discharged the second shot at close range.
‘He shot Charlise twice with a stolen gun,’ Justice Wilson said.
‘It was not survivable and was not intended to be.’
Ms Mutten has since gotten off of drugs and said that while she got justice through the courts, there’s nothing ‘that will make it better for me and my family’.
‘I forgive him, not for him, but for me. So he has no power over me,’ she said.
She added that she would like her daughter to be remembered as an ‘amazing little bundle of joy … that didn’t serve to have her life take’.
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