Charlise Mutten’s mother has broken down in the witness box and fled the courtroom after being accused of killing her nine-year-old daughter.
Kallista Mutten was grilled by her ex-fiance Justin Stein’s lawyer on Tuesday about her excessive methamphetamine use, including while pregnant with his child.
But at about 11.15am, Carolyn Davenport SC put it to her: ‘You shot and killed your daughter’, to which Ms Mutten replied, ‘Are you serious?’
She then burst into tears, crying out ‘I didn’t even know where she was shot’ before Ms Davenport added that Stein ‘had seen you deliver the second shot’.
Ms Mutten then ran from the courtroom after being excused from the witness box while the jury was also temporarily sent out.
Charlise Mutten’s mother has fled the court in tears after being accused by Justin Stein’s lawyer of shooting her nine-year-old daughter dead
Kallista Mutten (centre) arrives at court on Tuesday
The dramatic moment came after more than an hour of evidence in which Ms Mutten admitted taking methamphetamine even when her daughter came to visit.
Ms Mutten was being cross-examined on day 12 of Stein’s trial, who is charged with Charlise’s murder in January 2022.
The 40-year-old agreed she had psychotic episodes while on ice and had continued to take the drug despite her Charlise’s visit during the summer school holidays in 2022.
She denied she and Charlise were not getting along in the days before her death, or that she had been told to leave the Stein’s Mount Wilson property.
‘I chose to leave because I didn’t want to be there any more. Yeah, I was very hormonal, I was pregnant. Yeah, I was using, yeah. My emotions were very strong at the time,’ she said.
Asked if she had continued to take ice despite being pregnant, Ms Mutten said: ‘A few occasions’, and when asked if that was with ‘no concern about the effect on her unnborn child’, she replied: ‘You could say that, yes.’
Ms Mutten also agreed that Charlise was the product of a relationship with a man who was an ice user.
Stein, 33, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Charlise, but has admitted to disposing the schoolgirl’s body.
He is accused of murdering Charlise at the luxury property, Wildenstein, owned by his mother before allegedly concealing the child’s body in a a plastic barrel and dumping it 50km away on the banks of the Colo River.
Charlise Mutten (pictured) was allegedly murdered by Justin Stein
Kallista Mutten (pictured outside court on Monday) told a jury Stein told her that ‘kidnappers would kill her daughter’ if she called police
The girl was visiting her mother during the school holidays, and spent her time in NSW split between Wildenstein, where police allege she was fatally shot in the face at point-blank range, and at the Riviera Ski Gardens caravan park in Lower Portland where Stein owned a van.
Under cross-examination, Ms Mutten denied at the time just before Charlise’s alleged murder that Stein had told her the relationship was over when the schoolgirl returned to the custody of her grandparents in Queensland.
On Monday, the trial heard how Ms Mutten injected meth and had sex with Stein in a Sydney park just hours after he allegedly shot Charlise dead at Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains.
Ms Mutten told the jury that when she realised later that Charlise was gone she wanted to go to police but Stein claimed the schoolgirl’s ‘kidnappers’ would ‘kill her’ if her disappearance was reported.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC said Stein was the ‘last person’ to see Charlise and had the opportunity to kill her between 7.16pm on January 11 and 10.06am on January 12.
Ms Mutten told the jury on Monday she wanted to go to police once she realised ‘things weren’t adding up’, but Stein told her not to as his ‘ex-affiliates would kill her’.
Before this, Stein had claimed Charlise had been left with an ‘auctioneer lady’ who had come to the house on January 12 and offered to look after the sick girl.
The couple had arrived at the Mount Wilson property about 9pm on January 12 to find the lights off and no one home.
The jury heard Ms Mutten had called local hospitals that night to check whether Charlise had been admitted, but couldn’t find her.
Ms Mutten said she was ‘trying to be rational’ about where Charlise was, and assumed the auctioneer had taken her daughter, who had been ill and vomiting, home to care for her.
Accused murderer Justin Stein (pictured)
Overnight, the jury heard, Ms Mutten looked through her partner’s phone where she found messages which she believed were evidence of him cheating.
In the early hours of January 13, Ms Mutten took her partner’s car to a nearby campground where she sent multiple messages to friends saying her daughter was ‘gone’.
At this point, Ms Mutten told the jury things ‘weren’t adding up’ and when she returned to the property Stein ‘grabbed’ her, pushed her to the ground and started ‘kicking’ her.
Ms Mutten told the jury: ‘I remember just yelling just to stop because I want my daughter.’
‘He said ‘you’re going to get in trouble for this’, he said ‘do you think I’ve got anything to do with this for your daughter’,’ she said.
Ms Mutten told the court Stein then took a phone call from his mother, who told him the ‘the auctioneer lady is not the auctioneer lady’ and he thought his ‘ex-affiliations had … kidnapped her’.
Justin Stein allegedly drove around Sydney with Charlise’s body in a barrel in the back of his ute. (Picture NSW Police)
She said she wanted to call police and Stein had said no.
‘He said “you ring the police and they will kill her”,’ Ms Mutten told the court, before taking a moment to wipe her tears.
The mother told the court she was still affected by methylamphetamine she injected the previous day.
She told the court it ‘numbs’ her from reality.
‘Maybe if I hadn’t been on drugs I might have put the pieces together,’ Ms Mutten said.
The trial before Justice Helen Wilson continues.
