Charlise Mutten’s alleged killer claimed he had no idea he was driving with the nine-year-old’s body in the back of his ute until he received a call while he was at Bunnings, jurors have been told.
Justin Stein, 33, faces trial at the NSW Supreme Court in Parramatta after pleading not guilty to murder but admitting disposing of the schoolgirl’s body.
He is accused of murdering Charlise, the daughter of his ex-partner Kallista Mutten, on her parents’ property before dumping her body, which was hidden in a plastic barrel, near the Colo River area.
The girl was visiting her mother and Stein during the school holidays, and spent her time in New South Wales split between Stein’s family property in Mount Wilson, where she was allegedly shot dead, and at the Riviera Ski Gardens caravan park. in Lower Portland, about 1.5 hours. far.
Accused killer Justin Stein, 33, (pictured) but claims he did not know he was driving with the body of nine-year-old Charlise Mutten in the back of his ute until he received a phone call from his mother Kallista while at Bunnings.
Charlise Mutten’s body (pictured) was found in a barrel on an embankment near the Colo River four days after her mother reported her missing.
On Tuesday, calls between Stein and his mother, made from prison in the weeks after the alleged murder, were presented to the jury.
The jury heard his mother, Annemie Stein, ask her son why he was traveling with the barrel in the back of his Holden Colorado vehicle.
“Well, I didn’t even know it, Kallista put it in the back of the ute,” he is heard saying on the recording, which was played for the jury.
Stein claims he thought the barrel was in his car so he could work on another property.
In another call he repeats the claims and says he “didn’t even think about it” when Mrs Mutten put the cannon in the back of the ute.
“I’m literally in Bunnings and I get a phone call saying ‘you have Charlise with you’, and I said ‘what’,” jurors heard Stein say in the third phone call.
“Yeah…I was driving with a bloody kid in the back of my ute.”
The jury later heard that the phone call Stein refers to while at Bunnings was a call from his phone to Ms Mutten.
Stein allegedly drove around Sydney with Charlise’s body in the back of his ute (pictured)
Early in the trial, the jury was told Stein had driven around Sydney for hours on the afternoon of January 13, 2022, into the early hours of the next morning with Charlise’s body in a barrel in the back of his ute. .
Stein drove to Marsden Park Bunnings, where he is seen on CCTV buying five 20kg sandbags.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay told the jury that when police later recovered the barrel containing Charlise’s body, there was 99kg of sand inside.
When his mother asked him why he was driving around Sydney for hours, Stein said he “panicked”.
He told Annemie that the police had approached him to ask where the murder weapon was and where Charlise had been killed.
“They don’t even know anything,” the jury heard him say, before stating that Mrs. Mutten “is going to be accused of everything.”
He doubles down on his claim that “it’s the truth” and tells his mother that the police have “nothing” and can’t “identify” him for the murder, but that he “saw” it happen.
Stein then tells her mother Charlise that she was not murdered on the property, but on nearby Crown land.
“Behind the shed on the firebreak… I guess he ran towards me into the shed because the last thing he yelled was my name and then you heard ‘Mom no’ and then the second gunshot,” Stein said.
In the recording he tells his mother about Mrs. Mutten: “I don’t want contact, I want to cut her fucking head off.”
Prosecutors allege that Charlise traveled to Mount Wilson from the trailer park alone with Stein on the night of January 11, 2022, while Mutten stayed behind.
McKay alleges that Stein was the “last person” to see Charlise and had the opportunity to see her between 7:16 pm on January 11 and 10:06 am on January 12.
Stein accused Mrs. Mutten (pictured) of shooting her daughter.
Charlise’s body was found in a barrel on an embankment near the Colo River four days after her mother reported her missing.
After his arrest in January 2022, Stein denied killing Charlise in an interview with a Correctional Services officer, but said “her mother shot him twice,” the jury heard.
“Her mother was on the ice all week, I heard a gunshot and then I heard her scream for me, then I ran back and she shot him again,” he told the prison guard, the jury heard.
A toxicology report showed that Charlise had tested positive for Stein’s schizophrenia medication.
The trial continues before Judge Helen Wilson.
