A jury found Justin Stein guilty of murdering nine-year-old Charlise Mutten after eight marathon days of deliberations.
Stein, 33, blinked rapidly and scratched his beard as the jury returned its guilty verdict at 10.15am in the New South Wales Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The convicted murderer, who shot Charlise in the face while she was on holiday with him and her mother Kallista Mutten, Stein’s then-fiancée, could face life behind bars.
Stein had pleaded not guilty to Charlise’s murder and claimed it was Kallista, 40, who shot her daughter in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.
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.
Justin Stein has been on trial for a month accused of murdering nine-year-old Charlise Mutten
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 claimed Kallista tricked him into driving with the boy’s body inside a barrel in the back of his ute before being forced to discard it on the banks of the Colo River.
But the jury did not believe him.
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Closing submissions before they were withdrawn earlier this month, jurors were told that a central issue in the deicide case was not how the schoolgirl died, but who pulled the trigger.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 Helen Wilson had told the jury 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 Kallista 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.
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.