KALLISTA Mutten not only bears the unthinkable pain of living life without her daughter, but she has to do so knowing that she was murdered by someone who she loved and trusted more than anyone.
Charlise was just nine-years-old when she was killed in an “execution”-style murder by her mum’s fiancé at the time, 33-year-old Justin Stein, in January 2022.
Police found the schoolgirl’s body wrapped up in plastic and dumped inside a barrel near the Colo River, which had been weighed down by five bags of sand.
She’d been shot with a rifle twice – once in her head and once in her lower back.
But after remaining silent for three years, Kallista, who received huge backlash at the time for leaving her daughter in harm’s way, spoke out to insist she’s not the “monster” everyone thinks she is.
Instead, she claimed she’s also a victim who was manipulated by a web of lies fed to her by the love of her life.
“I’m not this monster that everyone has read in the papers and the news,” she said, speaking on 60 Minutes Australia.
Kallista and Stein first met in prison in 2018, where she was serving time for dangerous driving occasioning death and Stein for importing cocaine.
They met by chance when male and female inmates had to share the same visiting areas due to renovations taking place and they were both released in 2020.
She recalled: “We had the same sort of goals where we wanted to do better and have a better life.
“I wish I’d never met him.”
Kallista thought she’d finally met someone who shared the “same sort of goals” as her and wanted to have a better life.
But that misjudgement was soon to become the biggest regret of her life…
Her daughter Charlise, who had been living with her grandparents in Queensland from the age of four, had been visiting her mum and Stein in the Blue Mountains during the school holidays.
But while the innocent schoolgirl perceived him to be the “father figure” she’d desperately longed for, he was secretly plotting her gruesome murder.
Just five days after she was reported missing, her lifeless body was found dumped in the barrel by police.
That very same day, Stein was arrested and charged with murder after detectives used location data from his phone to locate where the barrel was dropped.
I’m not this monster that everyone has read in the papers and the news
Kallista Mutten ,
In June 2024, he was found guilty of Charlise’s murder and given the maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
“I regret putting relationships first,” Kallista said. “I hate myself for it. I really do.
“It’s taken this for me to wake up and realise that I already had someone that loved me unconditionally, and he took that away from me.”
While Kallista, who was using drugs at the time of her little girl’s murder, was heavily criticised for leaving her daughter with Stein, she insists she had no idea what he was truly capable of.
“I didn’t commit any murder or anything like that, but I do take accountability for the things I have done,” she explained.
Kallista’s life was in a dark place when her daughter travelled to spend some time with the pair.
She’d been battling ice addiction and was trying to get herself back on the straight and narrow – and she believed Stein to be the perfect companion to help her do just that.
After all, her daughter had innocently put her trust in Stein as she’d always “longed for a dad” – and he’d promised to be just that.
Kallista, who has been staying at Stein’s caravan park with her daughter at the time, recalled: “He actually said in the car, ‘I’m always gonna be a father figure to you Charlise and you can call me daddy’.”
So when Stein mentioned he needed to return to a property over two hours away in Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains for the night and Charlise asked to go with him, Kallista saw no issue.
“Of course you can,” she replied.
But those four words have rung in her head since that fatal day…as little did she know that was the last time she’d ever see her daughter alive.
What followed was a string of lies that Kallista admitted she totally fell for.
Stein messaged Kallista to let her know that they’d arrived safely and that Charlise was having the best time, but in reality, that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
“I said send my love and make sure she goes to bed on time and brushes her teeth,” Kallista recalled.
“I thought it was just a normal night and they were gonna come back the next day.”
I regret putting relationships first. I hate myself for it. I really do
Kallista Mutten ,
Instead, phone records that were seized during the police investigation showed that Stein spent hours ogling over dating sites and pornography, before shooting nine-year-old girl Charlise in the face.
Kallista has been largely criticised for taking two days to report her daughter missing.
However, she insists that she believed the web of lies Stein told her in a bid to cover his unthinkable crime – including that Charlise had been kidnapped by former criminal associates.
“It was just all lies, all lies. Everything was lies, but I held on to that hope that she was okay,” said Kallista, who claims her addiction clouded her judgement at the time.
But while Kallista had been fooled, police had their suspicions from the moment the schoolgirl was reported missing.
They dispatched dogs and helicopters to try and track down the missing nine-year-old, while volunteers searched through the thick Blue Mountains bushland.
After hours of searching and looking through CCTV footage, they managed to get a timeline of Stein’s movements and were eventually led to Charlise’s dumped body.
He was found guilty of shooting Charlise with a rifle in the back and head from about 30 centimetres away, which Justice Helen Wilson described as an “execution shot.”
In court, Kallista told how she put her daughter in harm’s way by trusting her fiancé, who she’d planned to marry.
“Charlise just longed for a dad,” she told the court.
“She trusted in my judgement and I just hate myself for being so wrong about it.
“You took away Charlise and with that my future as a mother.”
But as if taking her daughter away from her wasn’t enough, Stein’s cruel run was far from over.
In one final depraved act, he claimed that it was instead Kallista who was responsible for her own daughter’s murder.
She recalled: “As I found out that he was saying I did it, that’s when I knew that he’d done this.
“It was another horrible moment – I had let this person in, trusted him, and believed everything he told me.”
Despite the unimaginable heartbreak of losing her daughter at the hands of someone she loved, Kallista, who is now clean, says she forgives Stein – but not for his own sake.
She explained: “I forgive him, not for him but for me. So he has no power over me anymore.”
While three years have since passed since the heinous crime, the pain and grief Kallista feels hasn’t got any easier – and she often reminds herself how much her daughter loved her.
“I do have her in my ears saying, ‘Remember Mum, my opinion only matters, and you’re the best mum in the world,’” Kallista said.
“No one can ever take that moment away from me.”
