Charlise Mutten’s mum breaks silence after ex-fiance Justin Stein killed the schoolgirl killed the schoolgirl in a heinous crime that shocked Australia

The mother of murdered schoolgirl Charlise Mutten insists she is not a monster but has admitted in her first television interview that her little girl deserved better.

Nine-year-old Charlise was brutally murdered by her mother’s then fiancé, Justin Stein, in January 2022 at his family’s lavish home in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

Stein, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in August, shot the little girl in the face before dumping her body in a barrel.

Kallista Mutten has previously said that since Charlise’s murder, she has been harassed in public and abused by people on public transport to such an extent that she could not go outside.

She hit back at critics as she broke her silence 60 minutes in an emotional interview that will be broadcast on Sunday evening.

“I am not this monster, this unfit mother,” she told reporter Dimity Clancey in a recently released preview.

“Charlise deserved more.”

“I miss her so much, she believed in me,” Mrs. Mutten says through tears.

Mrs Mutten is told the gruesome murder took place while Charlise was in her care.

“I hate myself for it, I really do.”

The preview also shows footage of an excited Stein walking through a small police interrogation room.

As he does this, he blames Charlise’s mother for the murder. ‘It was all hers. I can’t sit here and cover for her.’

A police detective tells the show that Stein has “woven a web of malicious lies and deceit.”

Ms Mutten later describes her former partner as ‘pure evil’.

Another detective looks at CCTV footage police obtained of Stein driving around Sydney and says: “That’s when I know he throws that barrel away.”

The program also goes to the bushland where Charlise’s body was found, stuffed into an orange colored barrel.

“As soon as I looked over, there was a barrel down there,” one detective said. “(He) threw her away like crap.”

Sentencing Stein, 33, in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney, Judge Helen Wilson said he was “completely unrepentant” and “without humanity or morality”.

She said Charlise’s shooting was “unspeakably cruel and murderous.”

“These were deliberate acts and the second shot was an execution shot. He took these actions with the intent to kill her,” she said.

‘He tried to blame Charlise’s mother for his own indecent behaviour.

“Charlise wasn’t just a kid; she was a very young child of nine years and five months old.

‘Charlise had started calling the perpetrator ‘daddy’. This crime represents a blatant violation of that trust.”

Charlise was murdered after being drugged with Stein’s schizophrenia medication.

An adult dose of the drug would have a profound sedative effect on a child, the court heard.

‘She is said to have been in a state of marked drowsiness; she had even less capacity to defend herself and flee from danger,” the judge said.

Judge Wilson described Stein’s allegedly tearful account of Charlise’s death at the trial as “false” and said the tissue he used was dry.

“From where I was sitting I could see very clearly, he had completely dry eyes and not a single tear shed,” she said in disgust.

Charlise had visited 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 at a property in the Blue Mountains, while her mother stayed in a caravan about 90 minutes away.

The same day Charlise’s body was found, investigators charged Stein with murder after using location data from his phone to determine where the barrel had fallen.

Judge Wilson said Stein likely shot the girl once in the back as she tried to flee, before approaching her and firing another shot directly into her head.

“This was a shockingly callous crime,” Ms Wilson said.

‘The perpetrator approached Charlise and fired the second shot from close range.

“He shot Charlise twice with a stolen gun,” Judge Wilson said.

‘It was not survivable and that was not the intention.’

Stein’s barrister, 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.

“As far as we know there was no motive,” she said.

Ms Mutten had burst into tears during an earlier hearing and told her former fiancé: ‘I hate myself for trusting you’.

She read a victim impact statement via audio-video link.

With a trembling voice, Mrs. Mutten said to Stein, “(Charlise) just longed for you to be her father. I just hate myself for being so wrong about you.

“I have been forced to live with the fact that I trusted someone and because of that trust I put my daughter in danger.”

Stein blinked rapidly and then closed his eyes for several seconds, his leg shaking restlessly as he listened to the statements of Mrs. Mutten and her father.

“I won’t see her grow up, have her first boyfriend and get married,” Charlise’s mother said.

‘I especially miss being Charlise’s mother and having her say I love you.

“Charlise was my biggest fan and always said I was the best mother in the world.”

A week after the shooting, detectives found Charlise’s 70-pound body wrapped in a tarpaulin, bound with tape and face-first in an industrial 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 serious intravenous methamphetamine addict, for her own daughter’s murder.

The court heard Kallista was injecting as many as ’17 points a day’ and had suffered psychotic episodes as she lay on the floor, babbling and incoherent.

But in traumatic testimony at the trial, she said she had not been with Stein or Charlise the night the murder occurred and believed his story that her daughter was being cared for by another woman.

On June 19, after 35 hours of deliberation over eight days, a jury found Justin Stein guilty of Charlise’s murder.

Stein had already admitted disposing of the body after police captured CCTV footage of him driving the tarpaulin-draped barrel through Sydney, collecting sand at Bunnings to weigh it down and then driving it to the riverbank 100km northwest of Sydney drove.

Stein had claimed that after Mrs. Mutten shot her daughter, she secretly placed Charlise’s body in the barrel and secured it to the back of his body without his knowledge.

But the jury didn’t believe him.

Mrs Mutten denied any involvement in her daughter’s death and burst into tears when confronted with the accusation in court.

Stein appeared as the only defense witness in the trial and spent two days going over his version of events.

Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC said Stein gave Charlise his schizophrenia drug Quetiapine ‘intentionally or … accidentally’.

Stein denied giving Charlise the medication and said he had gone along with a plan by Charlie’s mother to cover up the murder, including lying to police about leaving the girl in the care of a woman who was appraising items at the Mount Wilson estate.