Charlise Mutten’s mother collapsed on the witness stand and fled the courtroom after being accused of killing her nine-year-old daughter.
Kallista Mutten was questioned Tuesday by her ex-fiancé Justin Stein’s attorney about her excessive methamphetamine use, including during her pregnancy with their son.
But at around 11.15, Carolyn Davenport SC told her: “You shot and killed your daughter”, to which Mrs Mutten replied: “Are you serious?”
He then burst into tears and shouted, “I didn’t even know where he was shot,” before Davenport added that Stein “had seen you fire the second shot.”
Ms Mutten then ran out of the courtroom after being ejected from the witness stand, while the jury was also temporarily ejected.
Charlise Mutten’s mother fled court crying after being accused by Justin Stein’s attorney of shooting and killing her nine-year-old daughter.
Kallista Mutten (center) arrives at court on Tuesday
The dramatic moment came after more than an hour of evidence in which Ms Mutten admitted to using methamphetamine even when her daughter came to visit.
Ms Mutten was being questioned on day 12 of Stein’s trial, accused of Charlise’s murder in January 2022.
The 40-year-old admitted that she had psychotic episodes while taking ice and had continued taking the drug despite Charlise’s visit during the 2022 summer school holidays.
She denied that she and Charlise did not get along in the days before her death, or that she had been told to leave Stein’s Mount Wilson property.
“I chose to leave because I didn’t want to be there anymore. Yes, she was very hormonal, she was pregnant. Yes, she was using, yes. “My emotions were very strong at that moment,” she said.
When asked if she had continued to take ice despite being pregnant, Ms Mutten said: “Sometimes”, and when asked if it was “without worrying about the effect on the fetus”, she replied: “You could say that , Yeah.’
Mutten also agreed that Charlise was the product of a relationship with a man who consumed ice.
Stein, 33, pleaded not guilty to Charlise’s murder but admitted disposing of the schoolgirl’s body.
He is accused of murdering Charlise at the luxury property Wildenstein, owned by her mother, before hiding the girl’s body in a plastic barrel and dumping it 50 kilometers away on the banks of the Colo River.
Charlise Mutten (pictured) was allegedly murdered by Justin Stein
Kallista Mutten (pictured outside court on Monday) told the jury that Stein told her “the kidnappers would kill her daughter” if she called the police.
The girl was visiting her mother during the school holidays and spent her time in New South Wales, split between Wildenstein, where police allege she was fatally shot in the face at close range, and at the Riviera Ski Gardens caravan park in Lower Portland, where Stein owned a pickup truck.
Under cross-examination, Ms Mutten denied at the time, just before Charlise’s alleged murder, that Stein had told her the relationship had ended when the schoolgirl returned to her grandparents’ custody in Queensland.
On Monday, the trial heard how Ms Mutten injected methamphetamine and had sex with Stein in a Sydney park just hours after he allegedly shot Charlise dead at Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains.
Ms Mutten told the jury that when she later realized Charlise was gone she wanted to go to the police, but Stein claimed the schoolgirl’s “kidnappers” would “kill” her if she was reported missing.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC said 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.
Mutten told the jury Monday that she wanted to go to the police once she realized “things weren’t adding up,” but Stein told her not to because her “former affiliates would kill her.”
Prior to this, Stein had claimed that Charlise had been staying with an “auctioneer lady” who had arrived at the house on January 12 and offered to take care of the sick girl.
The couple arrived at the Mount Wilson property around 9pm on January 12 to find the lights off and no one home.
The jury heard that Ms Mutten had called local hospitals that night to check if Charlise had been admitted, but could not find her.
Mutten said he was “trying to be rational” about where Charlise was and assumed the auctioneer had taken her daughter, who had been sick and vomiting, home to care for her.
Accused murderer Justin Stein (pictured)
During the night, the jury heard, Ms Mutten checked her partner’s phone and found messages she believed were evidence he was cheating on her.
In the early hours of January 13, Ms Mutten drove her partner’s car to a nearby campsite where she sent several messages to friends telling them her daughter was “gone”.
At that point, Ms Mutten told the jury that things “didn’t add up” and when she returned to the property, Stein “grabbed” her, pushed her to the ground and began “kicking” her.
Mrs Mutten told the jury: “I remember shouting to stop because I wanted my daughter.”
“He said ‘you’re going to get in trouble for this,’ he said ‘do you think I have anything to do with this thing about your daughter,'” she said.
Ms Mutten told the court that Stein received a phone call from her mother, who told her that “the lady auctioneer is not the lady auctioneer” and that she thought she had been… kidnapped by her “former affiliations”.
Justin Stein allegedly drove around Sydney with Charlise’s body in a barrel in the back of his ute. (Photo New South Wales Police)
She said she wanted to call the police and Stein said no.
“He said ‘call the police and they will kill her,'” Mrs Mutten told the court, before taking a moment to wipe away tears.
The mother told the court she was still affected by the methylamphetamine she injected herself the day before.
She told the court that it “numbs” her to reality.
“Maybe if I hadn’t done drugs, I would have been able to put the pieces together,” Ms. Mutten said.
The trial before Judge Helen Wilson continues.
