The man accused of murdering Charlise Mutten cried in court as he claimed his own mother shot him and gave his version of the schoolgirl’s final moments.
Justin Stein told jurors at his NSW Supreme Court murder trial that Kallista Mutten shot his daughter in the face and back before shouting at her: “You made me do this.”
Stein said he was on his family’s property when he heard a gunshot and Charlise screamed his name and then yelled “Mom, no” before a second gunshot.
‘I walked to the fence. That’s when I saw Charlise on the ground. (Kallista) had a rifle in his hand,” she told the court from the witness stand Monday.
‘I said, “What the fuck have you done?” and she started yelling “You did this.” She kept yelling “You did this” and then yelled “You made me do this.”
Charlise Mutten, 9, was on holiday at 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 yelled at me to get a tarp. I said no.” She then raised the rifle as if she were going to shoot. I raised both hands.
Stein said he then went into a shed and found a blue tarp 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 ground” before walking back to the main house on his family’s property at Wildenstein, on Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.
“I went… straight to my room… sitting there shaking, rolled a joint, burst into tears for 10 to 15 minutes, stopped crying, smoked that joint and 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 girl.
Dressed in a gray suit, cream-colored shirt, dark tie and sporting a beard and mustache, the accused entered the witness box at 10:07 a.m.
Stein, 34, denies murdering Charlise, but admits to disposing of her body.
It is alleged that Stein hid the boy’s body in a plastic barrel and dumped it 50 kilometers away, on the banks of the Colo River.
He admitted in court to having used heroin since he was 12 and that he 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 man has pleaded not guilty to the January 2022 shooting death.
He said he first met Mutten at Kempsey Prison on the New South Wales mid-north coast and the pair had started seeing each other when they left prison.
Charlise was visiting Mrs Mutten and himself during the 2021/22 school holidays and spent time in New South Wales. between Wildenstein and the Riviera Ski Gardens caravan park in Lower Portland, where Stein had a van.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC has alleged that Stein was the “last person” to see Charlise and have the opportunity to kill her between 7.16pm on January 11 and 10.06am on January 12.
But in his testimony Monday, Stein said the mother shot and killed the girl on the night of Jan. 12.
He also claimed that Charlise had been sick and vomiting after her mother had given the boy his schizophrenia medication.
Stein said that during their “very up and down” relationship, Ms. Mutten had used methamphetamine constantly and “became very paranoid.”
‘She would… think people are trying to kill her, poison her, worry about drones’ and ‘was always paranoid because the house was bugged’.
He said when Charlise arrived on holiday, things had become “more volatile” between him and Kallista, who “almost got jealous at times” of the “good relationship” he had with the girl.
He said he planned to end their romance after Charlise returned from her holiday in Queensland, but had also planned to marry Kallista.
Stein told the court he did not know Charlise’s body was in the barrel at the back of his ute until the evening and when he discovered it there he “vomited”.
He said he “paid for everything” in the relationship with money saved and his disability pension for his schizophrenia.
During Charlise’s vacation, he and Kallista “had a big fight, she then started cutting herself and then threatened to end her own life,” but he had also Googled marriage and adoption certificates and “there was still a part of it.” of me who loved her and thought she could change’.
On January 12, when prosecutors alleged Charlise was already dead, Stein said the girl was sleeping in her ute along with her 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 that he was “walking the dog while she injected ice in the toilets”.
Charlise, 9, was allegedly shot dead on the Stein family property in Mount Wilson and her remains were then placed in a barrel in the back of Mr Stein’s red Holden Colorado ute and dumped on the bank of the river. river.
He said that on Thursday, Jan. 13, which Stein said was the day after he said Kallista shot Charlise but which prosecutors said was two or more days after the girl’s death, he left Wildenstein believing he had an empty barrel in his ute. .
“It was completely empty. I loaded everything. I used two ratchet straps,” he said, describing the work he planned to do that day at his cabin in the Lower Portland trailer park.
Stein told the court it was nighttime and he had smoked cannabis and bought ice for Ms Mutten at the Drummoyne boat ramp when he finally learned Charlise’s body was in the barrel of his ute.
He said the canvas covering the barrel had come loose and, after stopping to fix it, ‘I noticed that the ratchet straps… were backwards.
‘I untied the straps… pulling on them, I tilted the barrel. That’s when I saw Charlise wrapped in a blue tarp in the barrel. I vomited.
Stein said that on Friday morning, January 14, 2021, when he showered and dressed, Kallista Mutten had returned to Mount Wilson and was sitting in the living room, watching television.
‘I started abusing her telling her that (she was) a piece of s**t, a putrid dog for what she did. I will never forget this, she smiled.
He said he then “threw” the ice he had bought her “in her face.” She started injecting herself.
The court previously heard that after Charlise’s body was recovered from the banks of the Colo River, forensic examiners discovered she had two gunshot wounds, one of which to the face proved fatal.
Prosecutors told the court that Stein and Mutten “broke into a home in Mount Wilson” and stole two firearms, one of which they said is “of importance to the case” and to the murder charge.
A .22 caliber bolt-action rifle is alleged to have been the murder weapon.
Charlise lived with her grandparents in Tweed Heads before traveling south to spend time with her mother and Stein starting December 21.
Kallista Mutten, an ice addict, met Justin Stein when they were both serving prison sentences for drug crimes and continued their relationship after his release.
Ms Mutten called Triple-0 at 8.15am on 14 January 2022 and reported her daughter missing.
The trial before Judge Helen Wilson continues.
