Charlise Mutten’s mother has broken her silence about having sex with the man who killed her daughter days after committing the despicable act.
Nine-year-old Charlise was brutally murdered by her mother Kallista Mutten’s then-fiancé, Justin Stein, at her family’s luxurious home in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney in January 2022.
Stein was sentenced to life in prison without parole in August after being convicted of shooting the girl in the head and throwing her into a barrel.
In her first television interview which aired on Sunday night, Mutten said Stein took her on a trip to Sydney to buy drugs after killing her daughter.
Stein lied to the mother and told her that he had taken Charlise to stay with a family friend near Stein’s house to take care of her while she was sick.
The couple bought and used the drugs before having sex in a park, without Mutten knowing that her fiancé at the time was plotting to dispose of her daughter’s body.
“It makes me sick to think about what he’s done,” she said. 60 minutes.
‘I don’t go into it because it makes me feel physically bad.
“At the time, of course, I thought she was in good hands and was with a family friend.”
Murdered schoolgirl Charlise Mutten’s mother Kallista Mutten (pictured) has broken her silence after her fiance was found guilty of the nine-year-old girl’s murder.
While she said she is “not the monster” she has been portrayed, Ms Mutten said she understands why many Australians judge her as a mother for her drug use.
“I didn’t commit any murder or anything like that, but I do take responsibility for the things I’ve done,” he said.
‘I wish I had been there for her more, I see it now and I have to live with it.
“Charlise deserved more.”
Mutten recalled that the last time he saw his daughter was just after playing in the pool while on holiday in the Hawkesbury River.
The mother allowed Charlise to leave with the man she trusted enough to call him “dad” and return to her family home.
She “thought nothing” 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,” Mrs. Mutten said as she fought back tears.
That night, Stein spent hours on dating websites and watching pornography while Charlise was home with him before making the shocking decision to kill her.
Ms Mutten’s partner Justin Stein (both pictured) brutally shot the young woman in the face while at her family’s luxurious Blue Mountains property in January 2022.
Stein told the mother that Charlise (both pictured) was sick and was staying with a family friend while he planned to dispose of her body.
Police discovered she had been drugged with Stein’s schizophrenia medication before running off the property and being shot in the hip and face.
Stein then dumped the weapons and the girl’s body before returning to Ms. Mutten to tell her he was with a family friend.
Alarms went off after the couple returned to a friend’s house to retrieve Charlise, only to find no trace of her.
Mutten called hospitals before the police to report her missing, sparking a massive search effort, while Stein gave her a premonitory warning.
“I thought maybe I had taken Charlie to a hospital because he wasn’t feeling well, so I was on the phone calling various hospitals,” he said.
‘He said, ‘she’s not going to be there.’ You’re not going to find it.”
Mutten said she feels “physically sick” remembering the drug-fueled sex she had with Stein without knowing the monster had killed her little girl.
Stein had been trying to delay the mother’s contact with the police to buy time to dump her body in a barrel he bought from Bunnings shortly after killing her.
Stein was pictured buying a barrel and bags of sand from Bunnings to put Charlise’s body in in the following days, while others held out hope of finding her alive.
To buy more time, he told Mrs. Mutten that Charlise had been kidnapped by a drug dealer of his and that he was going on a mission to rescue her.
He warned that if the mother contacted the police, the criminals would ‘shoot’ her because they were ‘dangerous people’.
“This was all a lie, it was all a lie, it was all a lie, but I held on to the hope that she was okay,” Mutten said.
Instead of rescuing the girl, Stein was captured on CCTV footage driving his ute around Sydney with the barrel under a tarp tied to the tray.
Police believe he was looking for a place to leave the child and stopped at a docking ramp in Drummoyne for several hours to, by his own admission, smoke cannabis.
Investigators reconstructed their 12-hour journey to and from Sydney before noticing the barrel of the ute was missing upon arrival in the Blue Mountains.
Investigators found the barrel and Charlise’s body in subsequent searches in the Blue Mountains and arrested him for murdering the young woman that same day.
Searches along the route uncovered the barrel and the heartbreaking discovery of Charlise’s body inside.
Stein was arrested at his family home that same day.
“I just screamed and said ‘no, no,'” Mrs. Mutten said.
“They never told me how many times he had been shot. They never told me where they shot him.
“The thought of what she would have had to go through, that’s what tears me up.”
Stein attempted to pin the murder on his fiancée during a police interview and again while testifying in court.
He had already admitted disposing of the body, but claimed Mrs Mutten shot his daughter, secretly placed Charlise’s body in the barrel and secured it in the back of her 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 he was saying I had done it, I knew he had done this,” Ms. Mutten said.
Despite attempting to pin the death on his fiancée, Stein was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in August.
“That was another horrible moment where I let this person in and trusted and believed everything he told me.”
Judge Helen Wilson said Stein probably shot the girl once in the back as she tried to flee, before approaching her and firing another shot directly into her head.
“This was a shockingly cruel crime,” Ms Wilson said.
‘The offender approached Charlise and fired the second shot at close range.
“He shot Charlise twice with a stolen gun,” Judge Wilson said.
“It was not possible to survive and it was not planned to be.”
Mutten has since quit drugs and said that while he got justice through the courts, there is nothing “that will make things 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… who didn’t serve to have her life taken.”
