WARNING: Disturbing content
The man accused of shooting schoolgirl Charlise Mutten twice, in the head and the side of her body, before dumping her body in a barrel, claims the girl’s mother is responsible for her death, jurors were told .
Justin Laurens Stein, 33, faces trial at the NSW Supreme Court in Parramatta after pleading not guilty to murder.
He is accused of murdering his ex-partner’s daughter, Kallista Mutten, on her parents’ property and throwing her body in a plastic barrel in the Colo River area.
Delivering her opening address on Monday, her defense lawyer, Carolyn Davenport SC, told jurors they will have a “very different view of Kallista Mutten” after receiving the evidence.
Davenport, who described her as an ice user “since she was 20,” told jurors that her client told “several versions” of what happened to the boy to protect her ex-partner.
“Charlise was murdered… by her mother… near a chicken coop on the property,” Mrs Davenport told the jury.
“He didn’t know what happened to the boy, he got rid of the body… he didn’t put the body in the barrel but he did get rid of it.”
The man accused of shooting schoolgirl Charlise Mutten (pictured), his ex-partner’s daughter, claims she was actually murdered by her mother.
He urged the jury to “listen carefully” to the evidence about Charlise’s latest sighting.
The jury was told Ms Mutten will be a witness at the trial.
The court previously heard claims from the Crown that Stein pretended to be looking for the nine-year-old girl while trying to dispose of the girl’s body in January 2022.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC told the jury, made up of five women and 10 men, that the day after Charlise’s death, Stein drove his Holden Colorado to Bunnings, where he bought five 20kg bags of sand. .
With the girl’s body allegedly stuffed in a barrel in the back of the truck and hidden under a tarp, McKay told the jury that Stein stopped at a 7/11 where he bought a can of Coke, Snickers and hailed before putting more than $120 worth of gas into a boat he was following.
Stein was in the dock Monday, dressed in a navy suit, a white button-down shirt and a navy tie, when he formally pleaded not guilty to the charge.
The nine-year-old girl’s body was found with gunshot wounds to the head and back in bushland near the Colo River in New South Wales’ Central Tablelands in January 2022.
McKay told the jury that Charlise had been visiting her mother and Mr Stein over the Christmas and New Year period, from December 2021 to January 2022.
Stein met Mutten while they were both serving separate prison sentences and their relationship continued once they were released.
Her defense attorney in his opening statement described her mother as an ice user who killed her daughter and that Stein alone disposed of the body.
McKay told the court that Stein and Mutten “broke into a home in Mount Wilson” in August 2022 and stole two firearms, one of which he said is “of importance to the case.”
Charlise was living with her grandparents in Tweed Heads at the time, but spent almost a month with her mother and Mr Stein starting on December 21, who the jury was told was being treated for schizophrenia and heroin addiction. at that moment.
The jury was told that Charlise had spent her time in Sydney split between the Stein family property in Mount Wilson, where she was allegedly shot dead, and at a caravan park called Riviera Ski Gardens in Lower Portland, about an hour and average distance.
On January 11, 2022, McKay told the jury that Charlise traveled back to Mount Wilson from the trailer park with Stein, while Mutten stayed behind.
The jury was told Mr Stein sent his partner a message the next morning, on January 12, telling her Charlise was feeling “devastated” and would stay in bed.
McKay told the jury that Stein had lied to Mutten, telling him that a woman from an auction company would take care of Charlise while he was away.
But he later told Ms Mutten that the girl may have been kidnapped by “criminal associates” from his past.
The jury was told that Stein later told a correctional services officer that he did not kill Charlise, but that he was “in the vicinity when Kallista Mutten shot and killed the girl,” McKay said.
The nine-year-old girl was visiting her mother during the school holidays when she was killed and was missing for three days.
The Crown prosecutor told the court that Stein had told Mutten and her mother that he was looking for Charlise on Thursday, January 13, when he left around 4pm with a barrel under a tarp in the back. of the truck, in addition to towing his boat.
Then he went to Bunnings and bought the sand.
After eating his snacks and fueling his boat, Stein traveled to Rose Bay Wharf, before traveling to Five Dock Wharf in Sydney, the jury was told.
“The crown’s case will be that Mr Stein told Kallista that the daughter had disappeared with another person, that he had left the property in Mt Wilson to look for her, while he was searching, with the body of the body in the ute of his car, to dispose of the body,” Mr. McKay said.
“But he told Kallista and his mother that he was looking for and trying to save Charlise.”
The jury was later told that Stein Googled ‘Colo River’ and allegedly threw the barrel down an embankment before returning to Mount Wilson at 4:22 a.m. on January 15.
The crown prosecutor told the court that Stein had told Mutten and her mother that he was looking for Charlise but was buying sand to weigh her body.
The barrel was found on January 18 buried in foliage halfway along the embankment.
After finding the barrel, which contained Charlise’s body, the jury was told police also found 99kg of sand.
A toxicology report showed that Charlise had tested positive for Mr. Stein’s schizophrenia medication.
“The Crown’s case is that during that period the defendant acted in a way where he was trying to convince Kallista Mutten and her mother that Charlise had been taken by other people and, in fact, he was trying to rescue her,” McKay told the jury.
But he told the jury that Stein supposedly the new Charlise had died and he knew she was in the barrel.
The court was told Ms Mutton had sent messages to Mr Stein and numerous others “in accordance with her belief that the child was missing” for two days before calling the police at 8.15am on January 14.
The trial, which is being held before Judge Helen Wilson and is expected to last six weeks, continues.