Charlise Mutten’s mum breaks her silence on the moment she had drug-fuelled sex in a park with the man who had shot dead her daughter

Charlise Mutten’s mother has broken her silence about having drug-related sex with the man who murdered her daughter, just days after he committed the despicable act.

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

Stein was sentenced to life in prison without parole in August after being found guilty of shooting the girl in the head and dumping her in a barrel.

In her first-ever television interview broadcast on Sunday evening, Ms Mutten said Stein took her on a trip to Sydney to buy drugs after killing her daughter.

Stein lied to the mother and said he had taken Charlise to a family friend near the Stein home to care for her while she was sick.

The couple bought and used the drugs before having sex in a park with Mrs Mutten, unaware that her fiance at the time had plans to dump her daughter’s body.

“It makes me sick to think about what he did,” she said 60 minutes.

‘I don’t go into that because it makes me physically ill.

“At the time, of course, I believed she was in good hands and that she was with a family friend.”

While she says she is “not the monster” she is portrayed as, Ms Mutten said she understands why many Aussies condemned her as a parent over her drug use.

“I didn’t commit murder or anything like that, but I do take responsibility for the things I did,” she said.

‘I wish I had been there more for her, I see that now and I have to learn to live with that.

“Charlise deserved more.”

Mrs Mutten recalled the last time she saw her daughter was just after playing in the pool during a holiday on the Hawkesbury River.

The mother allowed Charlise to leave with the man she trusted enough to call “Dad” and return to his family’s home.

She “didn’t think anything” about her decision at the time, which she now deeply regrets.

“That was the last time I saw her, I wish I had said no,” Mrs. Mutten said as she fought back tears.

That night, Stein spent hours dating websites and watching pornography while Charlise was at his house, before making the shocking decision to kill her.

Police discovered she had been drugged with Stein’s schizophrenia medication before leaving the premises and being shot in the hip and face.

Stein then dumped the weapons and the girl’s body before returning to Ms Mutten to tell her she was with the family friend.

Alarm bells went off after the couple returned to the friend’s house to pick up Charlise, but they found no trace of her.

Ms Mutten called hospitals to police to report her missing, sparking a major search, while Stein gave her an ominous warning.

“I thought maybe she had taken Charlie’s to a hospital because she wasn’t feeling well, so I was calling multiple hospitals,” she said.

“He said, ‘She won’t be there.’ You’re not going to find her.’

Stein was pictured buying a barrel and bags of sand from Bunnings to stuff Charlise’s body in the following days, while others hoped to find her alive.

To buy himself more time, he told Mrs. Mutten that Charlise had been kidnapped by a drug dealer of his and that he was going on a mission to rescue her.

He warned that if the mother contacted the police, the criminals would “shoot” her because they were “dangerous people.”

“These are all lies, all lies, all were lies, but I held on to the hope that she was okay,” Ms. Mutten said.

Instead of saving the girl, Stein was captured on CCTV driving his car through Sydney with the barrel strapped to the tray under a tarpaulin.

Police believe he was looking for a place to dump the girl and stopped at a jetty in Drummoyne for several hours to smoke what he said was cannabis.

Investigators mapped his 12-hour drive to and from Sydney before noticing the barrel was missing from the ute upon his arrival in the Blue Mountains.

Searches along the route revealed the barrel and the heartbreaking discovery of Charlise’s body inside.

Stein was arrested at his family’s home that same day.

“I just screamed and just said ‘no, no,’” Ms. Mutten said.

“I was never told how many times she was shot. I was never told where she was shot.

‘The thought of what she had to go through breaks me.’

Stein tried to pin the murder on his fiancée during an interview with police and again during his testimony in court.

He had already admitted to disposing of the body, but claimed that Mrs Mutten had shot her daughter, secretly placed Charlise’s body in the barrel and secured it to the back of his body without his knowledge.

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

“As soon as I found out he said I did it, I knew he did this,” Ms Mutten said.

“That was another horrible moment that I let this person in and trusted and believed everything he told me.”

Judge Helen 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.’

Ms Mutten has since come off drugs and said that although she has received justice through the courts, there is nothing “that will make it better for me and my family”.

‘I forgive him, not for him, but for me. So he has no power over me,” she said.

She added that she would like her daughter to be remembered as a “great little bundle of joy… who didn’t take her life.”