Horrifying Google search revealed in Charlise Mutten murder case
The mother of Charlise Mutten made a grim Google search after having sex with her daughter’s alleged killer, a court has heard.
GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING
The mother of Charlise Mutten slept with the man accused of killing her daughter and then Googled symptoms of an unpleasant sexually transmitted disease, a court has heard.
Justin Laurens Stein, 33, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Charlise on or around 12 January 2022 in the Blue Mountains.
Charlise’s mother Kallista Mutten and Stein drove to Sydney to buy drugs after the nine-year-old was allegedly shot.
The NSW Supreme Court was told Charlise had spent the night of 11 January alone with Mr Stein at a property in Mount Wilson, while her mother was at a caravan at the Riverview Ski Park.
Mr Stein allegedly told Ms Mutten that Charlise had been sick and that he had left her with a woman who had come to do a valuation on the property.
Phone-location data suggested Mr Stein later picked Ms Mutten up from the caravan and they drove together to Surry Hills in the Sydney CBD, the court heard.
They allegedly travelled there to buy methamphetamine before travelling to Centennial Park, where Ms Mutten told police they had sex.
Ms Mutten allegedly asked in a message if the drug dealer could include “weapons”, which Detective Sgt Bradley Gardiner said referred to either syringes or a pipe used to take the drug.
After the couple had sex in Centennial Park, Ms Mutten searched “blood coming from penis after sex” and “blood coming out of penis after ejaculation”.
She then accused Mr Stein of cheating on her and contracting the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhoea.
Police alleged Ms Mutten forwarded intimate messages and images from Mr Stein’s phone and messaged him saying, “you’re a liar, cheat and now I’ve lost my daughter”.
When the couple arrived back at the Mount Wilson, Ms Mutten called Lithgow hospital and Blue Mountains hospital having made online searches for children’s emergency rooms in the area.
Ms Mutten left the Mount Wilson property the next day in Stein’s red Holden Colorado ute.
“If you don’t bring it back I’m going to hurt you as well as everyone else,” he said in one of the messages.
“I’ve got me f**king guns and I’m going to kill you.”
Alleged killer ‘broke down crying’
A jury heard Mr Stein broke down crying in an interview with police, telling them the schoolgirl “means the world” to him and she was going to be his “little girl”.
He spent more than two hours talking to police on January 14, 2022, two days after prosecutors allege he shot the girl twice and put her body in a barrel before rolling it down an embankment near the Colo River.
Through tears he told the officers that Charlise going missing was “f**king killing” him and alluded to his partner, Kallista Mutten, having something to do with her daughter’s disappearance.
“I don’t even know and that’s what’s f**king killing me...I feel like I’m having a constant panic attack like I can’t really breathe,” he says in the footage, which was played to the jury on Thursday.
“Going off my gut I think it’s got something to do with Kallista and her family.”
The 33-year-old is facing a trial in the NSW Supreme Court at Parramatta after pleading not guilty to murder, but has admitted to disposing of the nine-year-old’s body.
Charlise had been visiting her mother, who was engaged to Mr Stein at the time, during the school holidays.
She spent her time in Sydney split between Mr Stein’s family property at Mount Wilson, where she was allegedly shot and killed, and a caravan park named the Riviera Ski Gardens in Lower Portland, about 1.5 hours away.
The interview with Mr Stein was conducted on the day Charlise was reported missing, and just hours after he allegedly disposed of her body.
Mr Stein told police he had left Charlise with a real estate agent on January 12, who had offered to look after the nine-year-old because she woke up “vomiting chunks”.
The jury heard he then went to pick up Ms Mutten from the caravan park before they made a detour to Surry Hills in Sydney to pick up drugs.
When they arrived at the house at 8.44pm, it was locked and Charlise was nowhere to be found.
“I went around and checked everything...her bag was gone, her hoodie was gone,” Mr Stein told police in the video which was played for the jury.
He then called his mother and told police he found out some “pretty shocking information” that the real estate agent wasn’t supposed to be at the house until the following week.
Mr Stein told police he started to “panic” and walked around the property looking for Charlise.
About an hour into the interview he began to get emotional and broke down saying he felt “responsible” for leaving the girl with the woman he believed was a real estate agent.
Police questioned why he didn’t get the woman’s full name or number, or tried contacting her after the girl went missing.
When he was questioned if he was telling the truth Mr Stein said he had “no reason to lie”.
Mr Stein was asked if he believed if Charlise may no longer be alive, responding that he thought she would “be OK”.
“In my heart I think she’ll be OK because I know the kind of girl she is...if something would’ve happened she would have left a sign or something,” he said.
The officers asked if he had been involved in the girl’s death.
He responded “No...no...never”.
“If she was hit I guarantee she would’ve been taken to hospital...that kid means the world to me if something happened I’d never live with myself,” he said.
Mr Stein told police he would have told them in a “heartbeat” if he knew anything bad had happened to the girl.
“That kid really does mean the world to me you know what I mean, I don’t have much experience but this was my chance,” he said, beginning to cry.“She was going to be my little girl.”
He told police he didn’t think Ms Mutten cared about her children as much as she claimed, telling them she “hadn’t woken up” after going to prison.
Mr Stein claimed he was trying to “build a new life” while Ms Mutten “sat on her ass doing nothing”.
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