Justin Stein: Man accused of killing Charlise Mutten made a stunning claim to cops about the schoolgirl’s mother during his second interview, court hears

The man who allegedly murdered nine-year-old Charlise Mutten flipped on the girl’s mother in a second interview with police, saying he lied to protect his fiancée but overheard her ‘talking about doing a runner’, a jury has heard.

Justin Stein spent more than two hours talking to police on January 14, 2022, two days after prosecutors allege he shot the girl twice and put her body in a barrel before rolling it down an embankment near the Colo River.

Moments after the interview ended, the jury heard a second interview had taken place where a police officer said there were concerns about what Stein said in the first conversation.

The officer said they had a conversation that wasn’t recorded where Stein was told they were ‘quite worried’ he had lied.

‘You said that previous version wasn’t totally the truth and you said you’d like to speak to us,’ the officer said.

In the footage played to the jury, Stein said there were elements to his story that were true but there were ‘some aspects that were missing’.

The 33-year-old is facing a trial in the NSW Supreme Court at Parramatta after pleading not guilty to murder, but has admitted to disposing of the nine-year-old’s body.

Charlise had been visiting her mother Kallista Mutten, who was engaged to Stein at the time, during the school holidays.

She spent her time in Sydney split between Stein’s family property at Mount Wilson, where she was allegedly shot and killed, and a caravan park named the Riviera Ski Gardens in Lower Portland, about 1.5 hours away.

He said a story about a real estate agent looking after Charlise wasn’t ‘his thing’ but rather a story he was told to tell by Ms Mutten.

In the first interview Stein told police he had taken Charlise to the house on January 11 and left her with a real estate agent the following morning, with the agent offering to look after the nine-year-old because she woke up ‘vomiting chunks’.

But he changed his story, claiming Ms Mutten was with her daughter the entire time.

‘I can’t describe her reasoning and her thinking she has a lot of issues when it comes to the custody,’ he said in the second interview, played to the jury on Friday.

‘Kallista has been planning to take Charlise… as for where she actually is I don’t know, I didn’t know when she was going to do it.’

He told the officers his fiancée had been ‘planning on taking Charlise’ for a while and he had ‘overheard’ her talking to someone else on multiple occasions.

Stein said Ms Mutten didn’t want to go to police initially, despite his urges to contact them.

‘For once I haven’t done anything wrong here and that’s the God’s honest truth,’ Stein said.

He continues telling police he has no idea where Charlise is, before insisting the girl could be with Ms Mutten’s ex-boyfriend.

When asked how the story about the real estate agent came about, Stein said Ms Mutten ‘dumped it on’ him.

‘Next minute all hell is breaking loose…that’s why it looks so bad,’ he said.

‘She basically dumped on me this f**king far-fetched load of s**t…It’s like I was being hung out to f**king dry.’

Stein said he had attempted to ask Ms Mutten where Charlise was but he never got a ‘straight answer from her’.

He said he didn’t know why he told police the lie, but he loved ‘the woman’ and wanted to protect her.

‘But at the same time I’m the one who’s going to get f**ked’…I’m genuinely not involved,’ he said in the footage.

The first interview was played to the jury on Thursday and showed Stein breaking down and crying, telling police the schoolgirl ‘means the world’ to him and she was going to be his ‘little girl’.

Stein was asked if he believed if Charlise may no longer be alive, responding that he thought she would ‘be OK’.

‘In my heart I think she’ll be OK because I know the kind of girl she is…if something would’ve happened she would have left a sign or something,’ he said.

The officers asked if he had been involved in the girl’s death.

He responded ‘No…no…never’.

‘That kid means the world to me if something happened I’d never live with myself,’ he said.

Stein told police he would have told them in a ‘heartbeat’ if he knew anything bad had happened to the girl.

‘That kid really does mean the world to me you know what I mean, I don’t have much experience but this was my chance,’ he said, beginning to cry.

‘She was going to be my little girl.’

Charlise’s body was found in a barrel wedged between trees on an embankment of the Colo River on January 18, 2022.

Stein is accused of killing the girl between 7.16pm on January 11 and 10.06am on January 12.

After his arrest in January 2022, Stein denied killing Charlise in an interview with a Corrective Services officer but said he was ‘in the vicinity when Kallista Mutten shot and killed the girl,’ the jury heard.

A toxicology report showed Charlise had tested positive for Stein’s schizophrenia medication.

The trial continues before Justice Helen Wilson.