“I got to the back of the shed. That’s when I heard Charlise scream,‘Mummy,no.’ Then ‘bang’ there was a second gunshot,then I saw Kallista.”
He said he had walked up to the fence and “that’s when I saw Charlise on the ground”.
Stein began to cry and dabbed his eyes with tissues.
A sketch of Justin Stein giving evidence at his trial in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday.Credit:Vincent de Gouw
He said Kallista Mutten “had a rifle in her hands”.
“I said,‘What the f--- have you done?’ She turned around,looked at me,started screaming,‘You did this … you made me do this.’
“I said,‘I’ve done nothing to you.’ She then screamed at me to get a tarp.
“She then lifted up the rifle like she was going to shoot. I put up both hands and said,‘OK,OK.’ ”
He said he found a blue tarp and after about 10 minutes went back outside to the area near the chicken pen but “there was no Charlise,there was no Kallista,they were both gone”.
Stein said he threw the tarp back inside the shed and went into his bedroom in the main house,was shaking,broke down in tears for 10 to 15 minutes,smoked a joint and fell asleep in a chair.
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Under cross-examination,Stein said he did not think about calling triple zero and had “assumed” Charlise was dead.
He was asked by Crown prosecutor Ken McKay,SC,why he did not lock the house if there was a “psychotic woman running around with a firearm”.
“I didn’t think to lock the house,I just came in,” he said.
McKay suggested Stein “didn’t think about it” because his claims of hearing the gunshots and seeing Charlise on the ground “actually didn’t happen”.
“It happened,” Stein said.
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Stein told the court he did not see Kallista Mutten until the next morning on January 13,when he claims she stole his car.
He said he called the police and “at the time I was going to give her up for what she’d done … for killing Charlise”.
Asked by his barrister why he didn’t “give her up” that day,Stein said,“I honestly don’t know.”
Stein said he had left the Blue Mountains on the afternoon of January 13,stopping at Bunnings to buy supplies including sand for renovations at his caravan.
He claimed Kallista Mutten called him while he was out,saying she wanted ice again and telling him,“Charlise was with me”,which he thought was her “ice talking”. He said he went to fix the tarp on the back of his ute later that night and found Charlise’s body in the barrel.
“I threw up,” he said.
Justin Stein drove his red ute across Sydney. Police say the barrel with Charlise’s body was in the tray.Credit:NSW Police
Stein said he panicked and started driving to no particular place before he stopped by the Colo River,pulled the barrel off the ute,filled it with sand and “pushed it off the side of the road”. He said his mental health was deteriorating and the voices in his head were “getting louder”.
The court has heard schizophrenia medication was found in Charlise’s bloodstream. Asked whether he gave the girl his medication,Stein,who said he was diagnosed at 21,replied,“never”.
Stein told the court he had a good relationship with Charlise,who was “always wanting” to hold his hand and be with him,and her mother became “jealous at times”.
Kallista Mutten denies killing her daughter,breaking down in tears when the allegations were put to her last week.
She said Charlise was not with Stein when he picked her up from the caravan park on January 12.
She said she was told by Stein that he had left her sick daughter with a female auctioneer at his family’s property on the morning of January 12,and he later suggested his former criminal associates may have kidnapped Charlise.
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On Monday,Stein claimed Kallista Mutten made up both stories to explain her daughter’s disappearance.
McKay said:“I suggest to you,in the circumstances you’ve described,you would not be agreeing to give a story ... that made you,in effect,the last person to see Charlise Mutten alive. Do you agree or disagree?”
“I can understand what you’re saying,but I didn’t think about it at the time,I just went along with it,” Stein replied.
Charlise,who lived with her grandparents in Tweed Heads,had been visiting Stein and her mother during the school holidays.