Privileges and lies: The wasted life of the girl murderer

Stein was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole on Monday for the murder of Charlise Mutten, joining a small group of New South Wales’ worst criminals sentenced to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

A jury found him guilty of killing the nine-year-old girl. He shot her once in the back and then in the face at close range.

A jury has found Justin Stein guilty of shooting nine-year-old Charlise Mutten. (HANDOUT/NSW POLICE)

Sentencing Stein, Supreme Court Justice Helen Wilson said there was nothing to diminish his guilt or help explain the “shockingly callous” crime.

Stein said he attended the elite boys’ schools Cranbrook and King’s in Sydney before dropping out in year nine, either because of his heroin addiction or because he was expelled for insulting the headmaster.

After graduating from high school, he was mostly unemployed and continued to suffer from a severe opioid addiction. He also had a criminal record that included burglary and theft.

But it wasn’t until 2016 that Stein saw the inside of a prison cell: he was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison for a failed plan to import cocaine.

He himself has been building up a wood and metal processing business for over ten years and promoting it through word of mouth.

However, Judge Wilson said Stein’s only sources of income appeared to be government welfare payments and support from his mother, Annemie Stein, who ran an antique jewellery shop in Sydney’s posh Queen Victoria Building.

The family also owned a sprawling estate in the Blue Mountains, Wildenstein, where Charlise spent her last night alone with Stein before she was murdered by him somewhere on the estate.

“Unlike most addicts, the offender had the advantage of a materially privileged upbringing,” said Judge Wilson.

“His family has supported him financially for decades, both in terms of his living expenses and in providing access to numerous rehabilitation programs.”

None of Stein’s rehabilitation attempts were successful, and a sentence of failing or refusing a drug test in July 2023 suggests he continued to use drugs while incarcerated, Judge Wilson said.

Stein tried to avoid responsibility for Charlise’s murder by telling many lies. For example, he claimed that her mother – his former partner Kallista Mutten – had committed the murder.

Judge Helen Wilson compared Justin Stein’s tears in the witness box to “theatre”. (HANDOUT/NSW POLICE)

Stein continued the deception throughout the days he spent on the witness stand, feigning tears while lying that he had watched Mrs. Mutten shoot her daughter.

Judge Helen Wilson compared the act to “theatre” and said Stein’s willingness to lie in this way was one of the defining features of the case.

“Instead of showing his pain over the brutal murder of a child he said he had come to consider his daughter, it showed his complete lack of remorse for killing her,” she said.

Judge Wilson noted Stein’s “proven ability to lie, and to lie profusely, when he believes it is in his best interests.” He also rejected Stein’s claims that he suffers from mental illness and was abused at a young age by one of his mother’s friends.

“I do not accept his self-disclosure of childhood trauma or mental illness as a mitigating factor for his crime,” she said.

The only time a doctor observed Stein exhibiting symptoms of the schizophrenia he claimed was in 2022, when he appeared to be talking to people in his cell while no one else was present.

Judge Wilson said there was a distinct possibility that Stein had faked these symptoms after being questioned by police about Charlise’s death.

“The only thing that can be said with certainty about the perpetrator’s mental health is that he suffers from a substance use disorder,” Ms Wilson said.

“An individual’s decision to use illegal drugs does not mitigate his crime.”

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