The mother of murdered schoolgirl Charlise Mutten has made a candid admission of what she thinks of the man who killed her and regrets of not being there when the little girl needed her the most.
Kallista Mutten was 12 weeks pregnant when her then-fiance Justin Stein, 33, shot dead nine-year-old Charlise execution-style before putting her body in a barrel at his family’s Blue Mountains estate and dumping it near the Colo River in January 2022.
After Stein was sentenced to spend the remainder of his life behind bars on Monday, Ms Mutten revealed that she has forgiven him.
It comes after Ms Mutten previously told the court in a victim impact statement that she hated herself for trusting Stein.
‘As hard as it is, I do forgive Justin, not for him but for me, so he has no hooks on me and will never have control of me,’ she told the Daily Telegraph.
‘People say I was in the relationship for money… I was in it for love and belonging… I thought it would be a fairytale.’
Ms Mutten gave birth to a baby boy six months after Charlise died.
Her ‘beautiful’ son, who turned two last month, remains in the care of relatives as she continues to receive treatment for drug addiction.
Kallista Mutten (pictured with Charlise at Christmas 2021, two weeks before the schoolgirl was murdered) has revealed that her little boy has given her reason to live
Charlise was a bright student who loved books and reading. She received an achievement award in literacy prior to her death
Ms Mutten said she was going to try and turn her life around for the sake of her son.
‘I might not of been there for my daughter as I should’ve been, and regret it a lot, but I have to live with that,’ she said.
‘I won’t let (the boy) down too, he deserves me to fight for him, and he deserves my love.’
She has already completed a long stint at a rehabilitation centre and is continuing outpatient treatment.
She has many vivid memories of her smart daughter and recalled how Charlise had read 150 books in the 12 months prior to her death.
Charlise’s school now has a literacy award in her honour.
Mr Mutten also recalled how Charlise told her that she was the ‘best mum in the world’ after being within earshot of people talking badly about her and Stein.
Ms Mutten said that since Charlise’s murder, she had been harassed in public, abused by people on public transport and followed by media to the extent she couldn’t go outdoors.
It comes after Justice Helen Wilson unleashed on Stein as she sentenced him to life in jail in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.
She said Stein was ‘completely without remorse’ and ‘without humanity or morality’.
She said the shooting that took place at Stein’s lavish family home in the Blue Mountains was ‘unspeakably vicious and murderous’.
‘These were deliberate acts, and the second shot was an execution shot. He undertook these actions intending to kill her,’ she said.
‘He sought to blame Charlise’s mother for his own indecent conduct.
‘Charlise was not just a child; she was a very young child at nine years and five months of age.
‘Charlise had come to refer to the offender as ‘Daddy’. This crime represents an egregious breach of that trust.’
Kallista Mutten has admitted that she has forgiven Justin Stein (pictured) over Charlise’s death
Charlise Mutten (pictured in December 2021, at her last Christmas) had been visiting from the Gold Coast when she was murdered by her mother’s then-fiance
Charlise was murdered after she was drugged with Stein’s schizophrenia medication.
An adult dose of the drug would have a profound sedating effect on a child, the court heard.
‘She would have been in a state of pronounced drowsiness; she had even less capacity to defend herself and flee from danger,’ Justice Wilson said.
Justice Wilson described Stein’s supposedly tearful account of Charlise’s death during the trial as ‘false’ and said the tissue he used was dry.
‘From where I sat I could see very clearly, he was completely dry-eyed and did not shed a single tear,’ Justice Wilson said in disgust.
Charlise had been visiting her mother and Stein for Christmas from the Gold Coast, where she lived with her grandparents.
She spent the night of January 11 alone with Stein in the Blue Mountains, while her mother stayed at a caravan about a 90-minute drive away.
The same day Charlise’s body was found, investigators charged Stein with her murder after using location data from his phone to pinpoint where the barrel containing her body was dropped.
Justice Wilson said Stein likely shot the girl once in the back while she was trying to flee, before approaching her and firing another shot directly into her head.
‘This was a shockingly callous crime,’ Ms Wilson said.
‘The offender approached Charlise and discharged the second shot at close range.
‘It was not survivable and was not intended to be.’
Only Charlise’s grandfather Clinton Mutten (above), who along with his wife Deborah was the nine-year-old’s legal guardian, turned up for Justin Stein’s sentencing
Stein’s lawyer, Carolyn Davenport SC, said it would be ‘very cruel and unusual punishment’ to send a man of Stein’s age to prison for the rest of his life.
‘There was no motive that we know of,’ she said.
Justin Stein shopping for sand at Bunnings to weigh down the barrel he has put Charlise’s body in
Detectives found Charlie’s body in this barrel (above, in situ, with the little girl’s remains inside), dumped by Stein on the banks of the Colo River
A week after the shooting, detectives found Charlise’s 33.5kg body wrapped in a tarpaulin, bound with tape and placed head first inside the barrel on the banks of the Colo River.
During a five-week trial in May-June, Stein tried to blame Charlise’s mother, then a severe intravenous methamphetamine addict, for murdering her own daughter.
The court heard that Ms Mutten was injecting a massive ’17 points a day’ of ice, and had undergone psychotic episodes when she lay on the ground, babbling and incoherent.
But in testimony at the trial, she said she had not been with Stein or Charlise on the night when the murder took place and believed his story that her daughter was being minded by another woman.
On June 19, after deliberating for for 35 hours over eight days, a jury found Stein guilty of Charlise’s murder.
Stein had already admitted to disposing of the corpse after police produced CCTV of him driving the tarp-covered barrel around Sydney, collecting sand from Bunnings to weigh it down before travelling to the river bank 100km north-west of Sydney.
Stein had claimed that after Ms Mutten shot her daughter, she secretly placed Charlise’s body in the barrel and secured it on the back of his ute without his knowledge.
But the jury didn’t believe him.
Stein driving oyut of the Lane Cove tunnel with the barrel in the back covered by a blue tarp
Charlise Mutten at school in 2021, the last year of her short life, and the barrel she was placed in when Stein disposed of her body in January 2022
