A court has been informed that the man who is on trial for the murder of Charlise Mutten believes her mother, not him, shot the nine-year-old.
The 33-year-old Justin Laurens Stein is charged with killing Charlise at Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney on or about January 12, 2022.
He entered a not guilty plea. After Charlise was shot in the head and back, her body was found later in a barrel that had been discarded close to the Colo River.
At the beginning of Stein’s trial in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday, a jury was informed that at the time of the alleged murder, Stein was seeing Kallista Mutten, Charlise’s mother.
The court heard that he had altered his story multiple times, first telling Mutten that her daughter was missing and then feigning to look for her before telling a correctional officer that Charlise’s mother had shot and murdered her.
However, the jury was informed by Stein’s attorney, Carolyn Davenport SC, that her client had altered his account because he had first been attempting to shield Mutten.
She said that the evidence would demonstrate that Charlise’s mother, not Stein, had the motivation to carry out the murder.
The jury was informed by crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC that the two had met while incarcerated.
Mutten was incarcerated due to his reckless driving conviction that resulted in death.
McKay told the jury in his opening statement that Stein had loaded the barrel with Charlise’s body into the back of his pickup with the aim of dumping it.
Before the body was disposed of, the court was informed by CCTV evidence that Stein had stopped once to buy five 20kg bags of sand from Bunnings and once more to buy a can of Coke, a slushie, and a Snickers bar.
Stein was receiving treatment for her heroin addiction after serving a jail sentence for drug-related offenses.
The court was informed that he was also on medicine for schizophrenia.
The jury heard that Stein and Mutten had broken and entered jointly at some point before Charlise died, taking two weapons with them.
“One of them … is of importance in the case the Crown brings on the murder charge,” McKay stated.
Charlise was being raised by grandparents who lived in Tweed Heads, where she also went to school, while her mother was detained.
On December 21, 2021, she took a plane to Sydney, where she was going to spend New Year’s Eve and Christmas with Stein and her mother.
Mutten called the police on January 14 and reported her daughter missing.
It took the police four days to find Charlise’s body.She had been shot twice, once in the face and once in her left lower back.
“The crown case will be that Stein shot Charlise Mutten,” McKay stated.
Judge Helen Wilson cautioned the jury that certain parts of the case could be difficult to handle and emphasized the value of maintaining objectivity.
“This is a trial in which it is alleged a nine-year-old child was shot to death,” she stated. “Some individuals find it very upsetting to see proof of a child’s death.
“You will need to be assured that you can look at such evidence and … maintain complete impartiality.”
It is anticipated that the experiment will last six weeks.
