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’s 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 fiancee Justin Stein at his family’s lavish home in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney in January 2022.

Stein, who in August was sentenced to life in jail without parole, 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 had been harassed in public and abused by people on public transport to the extent she couldn’t go outside. 

She hit back at critics as she broke her silence to 60 Minutes in an emotional interview that will air this Sunday night.

‘I’m not this monster, this unfit mother,’ she told reporter Dimity Clancey in a newly released preview.

‘Charlise deserved more.’

‘I miss her so much, she believed in me,’ Ms Mutten says through tears.

Charlise (pictured) was brutally murdered by her mother’s then fiancee Justin Stein at his family’s lavish home in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney in January 2022

It’s put to Ms Mutten that the horrific murder happened while Charlise was in her care.

‘I hate myself for it, I really do.’

The preview also shows footage of an agitated Stein, pacing around a small police interview room. 

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

A police detective tells the show that Stein ‘weaved a web of wicked lies and deception’.

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

Another detective, looking at CCTV footage the police obtained of Stein driving around Sydney, says ‘That’s the moment I know that he disposes that barrel.’

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

‘As soon as I looked over, there was a barrel down there,’ a detective says. ‘(He) chucked her away like rubbish.’

In sentencing Stein, 33, in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney, Justice Helen Wilson said he was ‘completely without remorse’ and ‘without humanity or morality’.

She said the shooting of Charlise 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.’

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.

Justice Helen Wilson said the shooting of Charlise (pictured) was ‘unspeakably vicious and murderous’

Stein, who in August was sentenced to life in jail without parole, shot the little girl in the face before dumping her body in a barrel (pictured)

Stein is pictured driving out of the Lane Cove tunnel with the barrel in the back covered by a blue tarp

‘She would have been in a state of pronounced drowsiness; she had even less capacity to defend herself and flee from danger,’ the judge 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,’ she 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 at a property 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 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.

‘He shot Charlise twice with a stolen gun,’ Justice Wilson said.

‘It was not survivable and was not intended to be.’

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.

Ms Mutten had broken down in tears during a previous hearing and told her former fiancee: ‘I hate myself for trusting you’.

She read a victim’s impact statement via audio video link.

Her voice shaking, Ms Mutten told Stein: ‘(Charlise) just longed for you to be her dad. I just hate myself for being so wrong about you.

‘I am forced to live with fact I trusted someone and because of my trust I put my daughter in harm’s way.’

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

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

‘More than anything I miss being Charlise’s mum and having her say I love you.

‘Charlise was my biggest fan and would always say I was the best mummy in the world.’

Stein tried to blame Kallista Mutten (above with Charlise, at Christmas 2021) for murdering her own daughter while in a drug-induced state

A week after the shooting, detectives found Charlise’s 33.5kg body wrapped in a tarpaulin, bound with tape and placed head first inside 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 severe intravenous methamphetamine addict, for murdering her own daughter. 

The court heard that Kallista 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 traumatic 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 cared for by another woman.

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

Stein had already admitted to disposing of the corpse, after police produced CCTV of him driving the tarp-draped barrel around Sydney, collecting sand from Bunnings to weigh it down, and then off to the river bank 100km north-west of Sydney.

Stein had claimed that after Ms Mutten shot her daughter, 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.

Ms Mutten denied having any involvement in her daughter’s death and broke down in tears when she faced the accusation in court.

Nine-year-old Charlise Mutten is pictured in December 2021, at her last Christmas

Stein appeared as the defence’s only witness in the trial, spending two days going over his version of events.

Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC said Stein gave Charlise his schizophrenia drug Quetiapine ‘by design 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 valuing items at the Mount Wilson estate.