Justin Stein has been sentenced to life without parole for the murder of his partner’s nine-year-old daughter, Charlise Mutten, in the Blue Mountains. A judge described the killing as a “shockingly callous crime of utter heinousness”.
Stone, 33, was found guilty by a jury in June of killing the schoolgirl, whose body was found in a barrel next to the Colo River in January 2022 with gunshot wounds to her face and back.
Justin Stein was convicted of the murder of his partner’s nine-year-old daughter, Charlise Mutten.
Charlise, who lived with her grandparents in Tweed Heads, had been visiting her mother Kallista Mutten and her fiancé Stein during the school holidays. Prosecutors said Stein shot Charlise at his family’s property in Mount Wilson, Wildenstein, while her mother was staying in his caravan in Lower Portland, 1.5 hours away.
On Monday, Justice Helen Wilson of the Supreme Court of New South Wales sentenced Stein to life imprisonment.
“This was a shockingly cruel crime of the utmost heinousness. It was deeply reprehensible and utterly evil,” the judge said.
“There is no indication that the perpetrator is capable of genuine empathy for others, so that his dangerousness could be contained.”
Justin Stein was found guilty by a jury in June.Credit: on facebook.
Wilson said the murder was as serious as it could be. She said Charlise was shot before she could escape Stein, who then disposed of her body in a “disturbingly callous” manner by filling the barrel with sand – including play sand – in an “astonishing act of grotesque cynicism”.
She said Stein gave a “completely false account” in his testimony in court and “made everything seem as if he had been crying,” but in her view he “did not shed a single tear” and used tissues as a prop.
