A jury heard the traumatic triple-0 phone call from Charlise Mutten’s mother to report the girl missing, before her partner was accused of allegedly shooting the nine-year-old and stuffing her body in a barrel.
Justin Laurens Stein, 33, faces trial at the NSW Supreme Court in Parramatta after pleading not guilty to Charlise’s murder.
He is accused of murdering the nine-year-old daughter of his ex-partner Kallista Mutten, on her parents’ property and then throwing her body in a plastic barrel in the Colo River area.
Mr. Stein is accused of putting his body in a plastic barrel loaded with sand and rolling it down the embankment.
The jury, made up of five women and 10 men, heard on Wednesday the triple 0 decision made by Ms. Mutten on January 14, 2022 at 8:12 a.m.
Justin Stein (pictured) is accused of killing Charlise Mutten and putting her in a barrel full of sand before rolling it down an embankment.
Charlise Mutten, 9, was reported missing two days after she was last seen.
Charlise had already been missing for two days when Mrs Mutten made the phone call, the jury was told.
The recording began with Ms. Mutten crying and the triple 0 officer telling the police that she should report a missing child.
“I’m sorry, I need to report my daughter missing… she’s nine years old,” Mrs. Mutten tells the officer through tears.
She tells the police her address before the officer asks her when Mutten last saw her daughter.
Mrs. Mutten, still crying, said “two nights ago.”
The officer asks where Charlise went two nights ago.
‘She was here (the Mount Wilson property)… I wasn’t here, my partner was here and during the morning she was really… she was a bit ill, lethargic, and I was two and a half. hours away,” said Ms. Mutten.
“Justin and the lady who came to do the auction for his mother… asked him if he could watch her while he went to pick me up because he didn’t want her in the car because she had been throwing up.”
Mrs. Mutten told the officer that the woman told Mr. Stein to “take his time,” but when they arrived at the house there was no one there.
“I called all the hospitals,” Mrs. Mutten explained.
In the recording, Ms. Mutten was asked if the morning before the phone call was the last time they saw Charlise and why it took them two days to report her daughter missing, and she explained that she had been “looking for her.” on the mountain.”
Charlise’s mother, Kallista Mutten (pictured), made the triple 0 call that was played on the court.
When the officer asked if Ms Mutten had any idea where her daughter might have gone, she was heard collapsing.
“No…she’s here on vacation for a month with me,” he said before crying.
Mrs. Mutten continues to cry as the officer informs her that the police will come to the property and begin an investigation into Charlise’s disappearance.
The jury was told early in the trial that Stein disputes carrying out a murder, but his lawyer, Carolyn Davenport SC, said her client admits disposing of Charlise’s body.
The jury was also told Stein had an “interest” in firearms, after he and Mutten broke into a Mount Wilson home in August 2021 and stole property, including two firearms.
One of the firearms was “important to the case,” the jury was told, and Stein later ordered a hunting rifle scope on eBay in late 2021.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC told the jury that the scope, along with the weapons, were later found buried in a fire trail at Mount Wilson.
The woman who stumbled upon the weapons gave evidence at Tuesday’s trial.
Verity Harris has a keen interest in flowers and was walking along a forest trail on January 30, 2022, almost two weeks after Charlise’s body was recovered, when she had a call from nature.
He found an “open area with a hole that an animal had dug” and went about his business, jurors were told, before coming across a patch of ground covered in sticks.
“It looked like a specially dug up area that had been covered with branches, I thought that looked strange,” Harris told the court.
Carolyn Davenport SC (pictured) defends Mr Stein
Harris did not consider contacting police until later speaking to his son, who is a Royal Fire Service volunteer.
He told her the RFS had been part of the search in the area to find Charlise and suggested her mother report what she had seen to Crime Stoppers.
After reporting what he saw, police discovered a blue tarp containing two firearms and the scope allegedly purchased by Mr. Stein.
McKay showed a photo of the tarp’s contents to the jury Monday. They were told the scope had a fingerprint of the defendant.
The jury was told that Stein had called his mother from prison months later, on March 21, 2022, and asked her to “retrieve things for him from the mountains.”
“He said, ‘I borrowed some things from my friend, I threw them in the bush, so I need you to get them back for me,'” Mr McKay told the jury.
The jury heard that Mr. Stein’s mother informed her son that police had already discovered the weapons cache, but he told her that “the murder weapon is nowhere to be found.”
After his arrest in January 2022, Stein denied killing Charlise in an interview with a Correctional Services officer, but said he was “in the vicinity when Kallista Mutten shot and killed the girl,” the jury heard.
The trial continues before Judge Helen Wilson.
