Charlise Mutten, 9, was due to fly home to her grandparents in Tweed Heads after spending almost a month in Sydney with her mother during the school holidays.
He was due to board a return flight on January 18, 2022.
But that day, the nine-year-old boy’s body was found in a barrel thrown down an embankment.
Also in the barrel was 99kg of sand and Charlise’s Nike trainers, a NSW Supreme Court jury was told this week.
Justin Stein is accused of murdering Charlise, the daughter of his ex-partner Kallista Mutten, on her parents’ property before dumping her remains, hidden in a plastic barrel, near the Colo River area.
The 33-year-old man pleaded not guilty to the murder but admitted disposing of the schoolgirl’s body.
The body of 9-year-old Charlise Mutten (pictured) was found in a barrel dumped in an area near the Colo River in New South Wales on January 18, 2022.
Charlise was visiting her mother and Mr Stein during the school holidays, and spent her time in New South Wales divided between Mr Stein’s family property in Mount Wilson, where she was allegedly shot dead, and the caravan park. Riviera Ski Gardens in Lower Portland, about 1.5 hours away.
On Friday the trial ended its second week and the jury has now heard from several witnesses, many of them experts who examined both the barrel and Charlise’s body when it was discovered.
This week, the jury also had the opportunity to hold the alleged murder weapon: a .22 BSA caliber bolt-action rifle, which had been wrapped in plastic with its magazine, ammunition and scope.
The barrel
The jury heard that the barrel containing Charlise’s body was found on January 18, 2022, after police responded to the scene after searching Stein’s phone.
Experts told the court that Charlise’s body was tied with blood-stained restraints in a barrel filled with sand, along with a garbage bag full of blood-stained dirt and the girl’s pink Nike sandals.
Former NSW Police crime scene officer Mitchell James told the jury Charlise’s body was head down in the barrel in the fetal position, “tied” in several bloodstained wrappers. and garbage bags.
A black plastic bag was also found in the barrel containing vegetation and soil, which also had apparent blood stains, James told the court.
“The body was found in a state of decomposition… there was a normal gunshot wound to the right cheek… it struck and dislodged a tooth,” Mr James said.
James told the court she also had a gunshot wound to the lower left side of her back, near the hip area, which pierced her pelvic bone.
Charlise was also wearing a black jacket, a red shirt, black boy’s sweatpants, a size 10 black Target skirt “with penetrating damage to the back,” and a single black hoop in her left earlobe.
Charlise was allegedly shot to death at the Riviera Ski Gardens trailer park in Lower Portland, more than an hour from Justin Stein’s family property (pictured).
‘Still alive’ when he was shot in the face
Forensic pathologist Dr Marna Du Plessis told the jury she carried out a post-mortem examination on Charlise’s body after it was discovered in the barrel.
The doctor described “powder tattoo” marks around the gunshot wound, which entered just below the girl’s right cheekbone, and led her to conclude that “the end of the snout was about a ruler’s length” from the Charlie’s face.
Dr Du Plessis told the jury that Charlise was also shot in the lower left buttock, a shot she would have survived.
“The gunshot wound to the back is not fatal in itself,” said Dr. Du Plessis.
He also told the jury that Charlise was still alive when she was shot in the face and that the bullet “entered her brain.”
“She was alive when the shot entered her body,” Dr Du Plessis told the jury.
Forensic pathologist Dr Marna Du Plessis told jurors Charlise (pictured) was still alive when she was allegedly shot in the face.
The jury was told Charlise’s body was in an “advanced” state of decomposition when the examination was carried out.
NSW Police forensic pharmacologist Dr Judith Perl told the court Mr Stein’s schizophrenia medication, quetiapine, was found in Charlise’s system.
“However, I consider it possible that quetiapine may have been ingested within six hours of death due to its presence in the deceased’s stomach,” he said.
The jury was told lead fragments had been found in Charlise’s brain and on her left hip.
‘Mom, no’
Stein’s attorneys allege that it was Mutten who shot and killed his daughter on the night of January 12, 2022.
Phone calls recorded while Stein was in prison were played to the jury on Tuesday, where he was heard warning his mother that she couldn’t tell her “everything over the phone.”
In the first phone call, which took place on the morning of February 5, 2022, he told Annemie Stein that the police had approached him to ask the location of the murder weapon and where Charlise was killed.
“They don’t even know anything,” he said in the recording.
Stein’s lawyers suggest it was his ex-partner Kallista Mutten (pictured) who allegedly shot the schoolgirl.
Annemie tells her son, “No, but they didn’t kill her at Mount Wilson,” to which Mr. Stein responds with, “I know.”
The mother continues: ‘But they claimed so.’
“Alleged doesn’t mean shit, all it means is that I’m going to beat the murder charge,” Mr. Stein responds.
Another call was made to the jury on February 10, 2022, where Stein says that Ms. Mutten “is going to be charged for 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.
Bunnings’ alleged excuse
—But then why were you traveling with the barrel? her mother asks in the recording.
He replies: “Well, I didn’t even know, Kallista put it in the back of the ute.”
Stein claims he thought the barrel was in his car so he could work on another property.
In a third call on February 12, 2022, he repeats the claims about Ms Mutten, telling Annemie that he “didn’t even think about it” when his former partner 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’,” the jury heard Mr 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 Mr Stein referred to while he was at Bunnings was a call from his phone to Ms Mutten.
Mr. Stein tells his mother that he “panicked.”
Her mother asks again if Charlise was murdered on the Mount Wilson estate and Stein tells her that she was murdered on nearby crown land.
“Behind the shed on the firebreak… I guess he ran towards me into the shed because the last thing he shouted was my name and then you heard ‘Mom, no’ and then the second shot,” Mr Stein said. .
Mr Stein told his mother he did not know the barrel was in the back of the ute and claimed Kallista Stein (pictured) may have placed the barrel there.
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.
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.
The trial resumes on Monday.