Schoolgirl Charlise Mutten's killer has joined the ranks of Australia's most notorious criminals, handed a life sentence for a murder a judge described as among the most egregious ever seen.
Justin Stein has been sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court to spend his remaining days in jail with no chance of parole, after a jury in June found him guilty of murdering the nine-year-old.
The 33-year-old showed little reaction on Monday as he received the life term before being led away by correctional officers.
Stein has remained behind bars since his arrest on January 18, 2022, the same day police uncovered Charlise’s body dumped in a barrel near the Colo River, northwest of Sydney, with gunshot wounds to her face and lower back.
In delivering the sentence, Justice Helen Wilson said the murder was at the top of the range in terms of seriousness.
"This was a shockingly callous crime of very great heinousness. It was gravely reprehensible and extremely wicked," Justice Wilson said.
The life sentence places Stein among the slender ranks of the state's worst killers, including crooked cop Roger Rogerson, backpacker murderer Ivan Milat and nurse Anita Cobby's killers.
Making the murder even worse was Charlise's young age and the trust she had placed in Stein, who was in a relationship with her mother, Kallista Mutten, the judge said.
"Charlise had come to refer to the offender as 'daddy' and she was entitled to his care and protection," Justice Wilson said.
Charlise had been visiting her mother and Stein for Christmas from the Gold Coast, where she lived with her grandparents.
She spent the night of January 11 alone with Stein at a property in the Blue Mountains, while her mother stayed at a caravan about a 90-minute drive away.
While the exact circumstances of the crime remain unclear, evidence suggests Stein shot the girl once in the back as she was trying to flee, before he approached her and fired another shot directly into her head.
Unexplained features of Charlise's murder, as Justice Wilson noted, include that she was found fully dressed except for her underpants, and toxicology revealed she had traces in her body of the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel, for which Stein had a prescription to treat schizophrenia.
An adult dose of Seroquel would have a profound sedating effect on a child, the court heard.
"How and why Charlise came to ingest Seroquel, and how and why she was without her underpants when her body was found, must remain undetermined," Justice Wilson said.
Following his arrest, Stein attempted to shift blame for the murder onto Ms Mutten, who he claimed to have seen shoot the girl.
Justice Wilson said she witnessed Stein pretend to cry during the trial as he gave a "wholly false account” of Charlise's death.
"His voice began to shake and then to break, he reached for a tissue and dabbed at his eyes," the judge said.
"I could see very clearly that despite the offender's presentation of distress, he was completely dry-eyed and did not shed a single tear.
"The offender’s evidence might have been called theatre if it wasn’t so calculated and so utterly cynical."
Investigators charged Stein with Charlise's murder after using location data from his phone to pinpoint where the barrel was dropped.
He would later admit dumping the body, but claimed he panicked after discovering it on the back of his ute.
Stein's attempts to hide the body and avoid responsibility were further examples of his lack of empathy, Ms Wilson stated.
"There is no evidence that the offender has ever repented what he did to Charlise, or even spent as much as a moment feeling remorseful for his crime," Ms Wilson said.
"Why the offender would have acted in such an unspeakably vicious and murderous way towards a nine-year-old girl to whom he stood in the position of a parent or carer is unlikely ever to be known."
