It was Christmas Day, 2021. Charlise Mutten smiled as she clutched two fluffy white Beanie Boo toys with glittery eyes. The nine-year-old was days into a month-long trip to see her mother, Kallista Mutten, and her mother’s then fiance, Justin Stein, after flying from Coolangatta Airport to Sydney as an unaccompanied minor on December 21.
“She was given her Christmas presents to take with her,” her grandfather Clinton Mutten snr told the NSW Supreme Court. This is the evidence of what happened on that fateful trip, after a jury found Stein guilty of Charlise’s murder . Born on July 23, 2012, Charlise spent the first four years of her life with Mutten, until it was decided in 2016 that she would live with her grandparents as her mother spent time in rehabilitation for her ice addiction.
That arrangement continued from 2017 when Mutten was jailed for dangerous driving causing the death of her passenger in a crash, and released in late 2019. She met Stein in custody, where he was serving time for drug supply, and they rekindled their relationship when he was paroled in 2020. Charlise attended Tweed Heads Public School on the NSW-Queensland border, where she was a voracious reader and enthusiastic public speaker.
When he put Charlise on the plane, her grandfather said he believed his daughter Kallista and Stein had “cleaned their act up”. He said Charlise, who was not in touch with her biological father, had asked whether Stein “would be a good dad”. Charlise celeb.