Chilling CCTV has emerged of schoolgirl killer Justin Stein casually buying bags of sand in a suburban Bunnings to weigh down the barrel used to hide the girl’s body.
Stein, 33, was found guilty of shooting Charlise Mutten in the face, and her body was discovered dumped in a barrel near the Colo River area after a month-long trial in the New South Wales Supreme Court.
Charlise was the nine-year-old daughter of his then-fiancee Kallista Mutten.
On closed-circuit camera presented as evidence during the trial, Stein was captured entering Bunnings Marden Park in Sydney’s northwest at 5:27 p.m. on January 13, 2022.
Wearing a surgical mask and dressed in dark shorts, a gray blouse, open-toed shoes and a bag slung over his shoulder, Stein was captured looking at his phone while strolling through the store.
He is seen talking on the phone as he walked through the external area of the nursery before grabbing a cart and heading towards where the sandbags are kept.
Schoolgirl killer Justin Stein casually strolls through Bunnings, where he bought sand to weigh a barrel containing his nine-year-old victim.
Stein looks at her phone as she walks to the Bunnings area to pick up the sandbags.
Stein loaded five 50-pound bags of sand onto a cart and returned inside, spending several minutes walking through the hallways.
He finally headed to the cash register to pay before leaving 21 minutes later, at 5:38 a.m.
Charlise was shot in the face while on holiday with him and her mother Kallista Mutten, Stein’s then fiancée, in Mount Wilson, northwest of Sydney.
The nine-year-old boy was shot and killed at the Riviera Ski Gardens trailer park in Lower Portland, about an hour and a half from the estate owned by the Stein family in Mount Wilson.
Stein had told Ms Mutten and her mother that he would set out to pick up Charlise on January 13, 2022, but allegedly left Mount Wilson with a barrel under a tarp in the back of the ute, as well as towing his boat.
He went to Bunnings and bought five 20kg sandbags, most of which were later found in the barrel with the girl’s body, the jury was told.
With the girl’s body allegedly stuffed into the barrel of the ute, Stein stopped at a 7/11 where he bought a can of Coke, Snickers and a slushy before putting more than $120 worth of gas into a boat he was towing. .
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 barrel was found on January 18 among foliage halfway up the embankment, and a subsequent toxicology report showed that there were traces of Stein’s medication for schizophrenia in Charlise’s system.
Charlise’s body was found in the fetal position, face down in the barrel loaded with sand. Her body was wrapped in bags and a tarp and tied with duct tape.
Stein picked up five 20kg sandbags and loaded them onto a trolley at Bunnings in Sydney’s northwest.
Stein heads to the box with the sand that he later used to weigh the barrel of his nine-year-old victim.
During the trial, the jury was told after the shooting that 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 rear of your ute.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay told the jury that when police later recovered the barrel containing Charlise’s body near the Colo River, near the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, there was 99kg of sand inside. .
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.
When his mother asked him why he was driving around Sydney for hours, Stein said he “panicked”.
Wednesday morning Stein blinked rapidly and scratched his beard as the jury returned its guilty verdict at 10:15 a.m., which could mean he would spend his entire life behind bars.
Stein pays for the sandbags, which were used to load the barrel containing Charlise’s body.
Justin Stein has been on trial for a month accused of murdering nine-year-old Charlise Mutten
During the trial, Stein pleaded not guilty to Charlise’s murder and lied that it was instead Mrs. Mutten, 40, who shot her daughter in the New south Wales Blue Mountains.
The jury deliberated for 35 hours over eight days, retiring on Thursday, June 6 after a month-long trial, and returning its verdict at the beginning of the ninth day.
Seven minutes after the jury foreman read the guilty verdict, Judge Helen Wilson formally convicted Stein of Charlise’s murder.
Stein, dressed in the same gray suit he had worn throughout the trial, and a cream-colored shirt and navy tie, continued to look impassive, aside from a slight blush on his face.
He claimed Ms Mutten tricked him into driving with the boy’s body inside a barrel in the back of his ute before he was forced to dump it on the banks of the Colo River.
But the jury did not believe him.
Stein leaves the Bunnings store with the five bags of sand she bought during her visit.
Charlise Mutten was shot and killed while on vacation with her mother Kallista Mutten (above), who was then engaged to the defendant, Justin Stein.
Stein was also charged with interfering with a dead body. He admitted during the trial that he disposed of Charlise’s body.
Closing submissions before they were withdrawn earlier this month, jurors were told that a central issue in the deicide case was not how the schoolgirl died, but who pulled the trigger.
Stein had claimed that after Ms Mutten shot her daughter, she secretly placed Charlise’s body in the barrel and secured it in the back of her ute without her knowledge.
Mutten denied having any involvement in her daughter’s death and broke down in tears when she faced the accusation in court.
Many of the facts of the case were not in dispute, including the fact that Charlise died from gunshot wounds she suffered on or near a Mount Wilson estate owned by Stein’s mother, the jury heard.
Judge Wilson had told jurors that if they found there was a reasonable possibility that Mutten shot his own daughter, they should find Stein not guilty.
Charlise Mutten, 9, died from a gunshot wound to the face fired at point-blank range in January 2022, after which her body was dumped in a barrel on the bank of a river.
Charlise’s body was placed in a barrel loaded with sand and placed in the back of Justin Stein’s ute under a tarp, driven to the Colo River and dumped.
“The Crown has no evidence that anyone saw the defendant shooting Charlise,” he said.
Stein appeared as the defense’s only witness at the trial and spent two days going over his version of events.
At the time of her death, Charlise had been visiting her mother and Stein from Queensland, where she lived with her grandparents.
Charlise stayed at Stein’s mother’s house in Sydney, then with Ms Mutten and Stein, who were engaged at the time, with the girl calling the accused “dad”.
They split their time between Wildenstein and a cabin at Riviera Ski Gardens in Lower Portland.
Charlise spent the night of January 11 alone with Stein at Mount Wilson, while her mother remained at the cabin, which is when prosecutors argued he killed her.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC said it was open to the jury to find that Stein had drugged and shot Charlise dead.
The schoolgirl, who lived with her grandparents in Coolangatta, had flown south to spend time with her mother and ‘stepfather’, Justin Stein, when the tragedy occurred.
An autopsy found that Charlise had traces of the antipsychotic drug Quetiapine, also known as Seroquel, in her system. Stein took her schizophrenia medication.
The jury heard that an adult dose of the drug would have a profound sedative effect on a child, but that it was difficult to know how much had been given to Charlise.
McKay said one possible motive was that Stein killed Charlise when she became ill after he gave her the drug.
Stein denied giving the medication to Charlise and said he had followed a plan to cover up the murder, including lying to police about leaving the girl in the care of an imaginary woman who was appraising items on the Mount Wilson property.
Stein testified that when he realized Charlise’s body was in a barrel in the back of his ute, he panicked and eventually got rid of it.
Stein will be sentenced on August 23.
