A jury has heard the triple-0 phone call made by the mother of nine-year-old Charlise Mutten, who was allegedly shot twice by her mother’s partner and dumped her body in a barrel.
Justin Laurens Stein, 33, will be tried in the NSW Supreme Court in Parramatta after pleading not guilty to murder.
He is accused of killing the nine-year-old, the daughter of his former partner Kallista Mutten, at a property owned by his parents before dumping her body in a plastic barrel near the Colo River region.
Mr. Stein is accused of shooting the girl before putting her body in a plastic barrel filled with sand and rolling it down the embankment.
The jury, consisting of five women and ten men, heard the triple-0 call that Mrs Mutten made on January 14, 2022 at 8:12 am on Wednesday.
Justin Stein (pictured) is accused of killing Charlise Mutten and putting her in a barrel filled with sand before rolling it down an embankment
Charlise Mutten, 9, was reported missing two days after she was last seen
Charlise had already been missing for two days when Mrs Mutten called, the jury was told.
The recording started with Ms Mutten crying, and the triple-0 officer telling police she had to report a missing child.
“I’m sorry, I have to report my daughter missing… she is nine,” Mrs. Mutten tells the officer in tears.
She tells the police her address before the officer asks when Mrs. Mutten last saw her daughter.
Mrs Mutten said, still crying, ‘two nights ago’.
The officer asks where Charlise went two nights ago.
‘She was here (the Mount Wilson estate)… I wasn’t there, my partner was here and during the morning she was really… she was a bit ill, lethargic, and I was two and a half hours away ‘, said Mrs. Mutten.
“Justin and the lady who came over to do the auction for his mom…he asked if she could watch her while he went to get me because he didn’t want her in the car because she was throwing up.”
Ms. Mutten told the officer that the woman told Stein to “take his time,” but when they arrived no one was in the house.
“I called all the hospitals,” Mrs. Mutten explained.
In the recording, Ms Mutten was asked if Charlise had last been seen the morning before the phone call and she explained that she had ‘looked for her in the bush’. That’s why it took two days to report her daughter missing. Police.
Charlise’s mother, Kallista Mutten (photo), made the triple-0 call that was played in front of the court
The recording started with Ms Mutten (pictured) crying, and the triple-0 officer telling police she had to report a missing child
When the officer asked if Mrs. Mutten had any thoughts about where her daughter might have gone, she could be heard breaking down on the phone.
“No… she’s here on vacation with me for a month,” she said before bursting into tears.
Mrs. Mutten continues to cry as the officer informs her that the police will come to the property and begin an investigation into Charlise’s disappearance.
Earlier in the trial, the jury was told Mr Stein disputed the killing but his lawyer, Carolyn Davenport SC, said her client admitted disposing of Charlise’s body.
The jury was also told Mr Stein had an ‘interest’ in firearms after he and Ms Mutten broke into a house in Mount Wilson in August 2021 and stole property, including two firearms.
One of the firearms was of ‘importance to the case’, the jury was told, while Mr Stein later ordered a shotgun scope on eBay in late 2021.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC told the jury the scope, along with the weapons, was later found buried on a fire trail at Mount Wilson.
The woman who came across the weapons testified during the trial on Tuesday.
Verity Harris has a keen interest in flowers and was walking along a woodland path on January 30, 2022, almost two weeks after Charlise’s body was recovered, when she realized she needed to go to the toilet.
She found a ‘clearing with a hole that an animal had dug’ and continued her work, the jury were told, before finding a patch of earth covered with sticks.
“It looked like a specially dug area covered in branches, I thought it looked strange,” Ms Harris told the court.
Carolyn Davenport SC (pictured) defends Mr Stein
Mrs Harris did not think about contacting police until she later spoke to her son, who is a volunteer with the Royal Fire Service.
He told her that the RFS had been part of the search for Charlise and suggested his mother report what she had seen to Crime Stoppers.
After reporting what she saw, police discovered a blue tarp filled with two firearms and the rifle scope allegedly purchased by Mr. Stein.
Mr McKay showed a photo of the contents of the tarp to the jury on Monday. They were told that the telescope had the suspect’s fingerprint on it.
The jury was told that months later, on March 21, 2022, Mr Stein called his mother from prison and asked her to “get him stuff from the mountains”.
“He said, ‘I borrowed certain things from my friend, I dumped them in the bush, so I want you to pick them up for me,'” Mr McKay told the jury.
Mr Stein’s mother told her son that police had already discovered the stash of weapons when police showed her an image, the jury heard, but he told his mother that the “murder weapon is nowhere to be found”.
After his arrest in January 2022, Mr Stein denied murdering Charlise in an interview with a Corrective Services officer, but said he “was nearby when Kallista Mutten shot and killed the girl”, the jury heard.
The trial continues before Judge Helen Wilson.