Charlise Mutten disappearance: Inside complicated family history and grandmother’s last picture

As Christmas passed and school holidays dragged on, missing schoolgirl Charlise Mutten’s doting grandmother agreed to let the nine-year-old visit her mother in Sydney.

The summer trip was the perfect opportunity for mother and daughter to reconnect after Covid-enforced border closures and a jail stint had driven them apart.

Charlise lives with her grandmother, Deborah Mutten, in Coolangatta on the Gold Coast and attends a local primary school south of the border, where she’s known as a spritely and cheerful student. 

Deborah shared a sweet photo just two weeks ago on January 5. With the ocean as a backdrop, Charlise leaned back and kissed her beaming grandmother on the cheek.

Five days later, after Charlise had already made the trip to NSW to see her mother, Deborah confessed to a friend she was ‘struggling’.

‘A bit of silly business was needed to lift the mood,’ she said alongside a photo of herself using a comedic Snapchat filter. 

‘Struggling a bit to be quite honest.’ 

Then, on January 14, she learned her beloved granddaughter had vanished while in the temporary care of her daughter, Kallista Mutten.

The nine-year-old’s complicated family history has been laid bare as search parties continue to scour the Wildenstein estate in Mount Wilson, in the NSW Blue Mountains, six days after she was last seen.

RFS crews have been searching the area for five days now, after Kallista and her fiancé Justin Stein reported Charlise missing on Friday morning. They hadn’t seen her since Thursday afternoon.  

Charlise’s disappearance puts a halt on what should have been a chance for Ms Mutten to bond and reconnect with her daughter after so many missed moments.

Ms Mutten was jailed in November 2017, when Charlise was just five, after she was convicted of dangerous driving occasioning death and driving with an illicit substance in her system.

It’s understood Charlise was handed over to her grandmother to care for her at the time. 

The court heard Ms Mutten was an ice addict and using two to three points every day when she swerved off the road and into the Tweed River, killing her passenger and friend, 53-year-old Karen ‘Kaz’ Bunch.

After the crash, Ms Mutten checked herself in to a rehab facility, but relapsed and began using again, the court heard.

She was also expelled from a clinic at Logan in Queensland after she threatened a fellow resident with violence. 

It’s unclear if Ms Mutten ever regained full time custody after her stint in jail. 

Daily Mail Australia revealed on Tuesday Charlise’s stepdad, Justin Stein, also has a criminal past from about the same time as when her mother was convicted.

Stein was sentenced to six-and-a-half years prison for possessing a marketable quantity of a border enforced drug in 2017.

He was released on parole after serving a mandatory three years and nine months in November 2020, and by December 1 2020 was engaged to Ms Mutten.

It’s unclear if the duo knew each other prior to Stein’s release from jail just three weeks earlier. 

Stein comes from a wealthy family who moved to the Blue Mountains from Perth around the time he was born.

They own and operate the Wildenstein estate where Charlise was last seen – which is known as an exclusive wedding venue – as well as a jeweler in the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney’s CBD. 

Stein, a former steel and timber worker, is understood to split his time between an apartment owned by his mother in Leichhardt and the Mt Wilson venue, which was initially bought by his father James in 1989.  

He has a registered business, Magix Steel and Timber, and refers to himself as ‘Magix Man’ or ‘Magic Man’ online.   

The 31-year-old shared a photo of a pair of hands tattooed hands with the words ‘Magic’ on the right fist and ‘Man’ on the left, inked with tattooed dollar notes and skull-and-bones symbols.  

Meanwhile Ms Mutten goes by ‘KStar’ on social media and has ambitions of one day working with women who are victims of domestic violence.

Her goal, she said, is to ‘help change and work in the community’.

She previously confessed she ‘turned to ice’ to help her cope with the struggles of life but said she was remorseful for ‘making bad choices’ that led to the death of her friend. 

‘If was able to change places with Karen… now knowing the consequences of my actions I would,’ she told a magistrate ahead of her sentencing.

Ms Mutten claimed she was clean and no longer using drugs after stints in rehab and prison. 

Charlise’s biological father – who has not been named – is ‘absolutely shattered’ the nine-year-old is missing, a friend said on Tuesday.

He, along with his family and friends, are hopeful she’ll be found safe and unharmed. 

A spokesperson for Charlise’s primary school released a statement on Sunday expressing concern for the nine-year-old’s welfare.

‘We are very much thinking of Charlise and her family and hope she is found safely as soon as possible,’ the statement read. 

It attracted comments from parents and members of the community offering their support.

‘Charlise, your teachers have you continually in their thoughts and really want to hear that you are back safe and well,’ one teacher said.

‘I can’t even imagine the anguish her family and friends must be going though. Please let her be found today,’ local MP Laura Gerber added. 

A small group of emergency service workers, whose numbers have been depleted by a Covid outbreak among volunteers, were warned on day five of the search the nine-year-old would by now be ‘lethargic’ and ‘stationary’.

‘It’s day five. She’s not going to be mobile,’ a police officer told the Rural Fire Service and SES searchers. 

The officer warned Charlise would need water from a ‘bottle, puddle or dam’ to survive in the wilderness. 

He couldn’t provide them with a description of what clothes she might be wearing as ‘we don’t have clothing unfortunately. We don’t know what she is wearing’. 

While Charlise was initially said to be wearing a pink top, black knee-length skirt and pink Nike thongs when she was last seen, neither Ms Mutten or her fiancé have been able to definitively say how she was dressed.

NSW RFS Commander Peter Bennett told Daily Mail Australia parts of the search area were ‘inhospitable’, made significantly worse by wet weather which hampered investigators on Monday.

‘It’s pretty thick scrub,’ he said. ‘Walking in line through that is exhausting.’ 

Police are appealing for anyone with information about her whereabouts to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.