On Wednesday of this week, stepfather Justin Stein was found guilty of murdering Charles Moten.
This happened after a jury in the Australian state of New South Wales deliberated the case for eight days, the radio reported ABC.
The 33-year-old is accused of shooting the schoolgirl twice with a rifle at his family home at Mount Wilson in the popular Blue Mountains National Park outside Sydney.
Lived with grandparents
When Charlize disappeared, she was on Christmas break visiting her mother and boyfriend Justin Stein in Sydney.
Because the mother struggled with drug abuse and had previously been sentenced to prison, the grandparents were the full-time caregivers for the girl. She lived and went to school in Queensland.
In court, Clinton Moten, Charlize's grandfather, said the nine-year-old was very much looking forward to spending the Christmas holidays with her mother and her boyfriend, he wrote. ABC.
– She said she really loved Justin, and asked me if he would be a good father, Grandpa said.
Charlize was reported missing on January 14, 2022, and a massive search was launched.
She wrote that on the day she was supposed to return to her grandparents' house, January 18, she was found dead. Sydney Morning Herald.
Police found the location using GPS data from the cellphone of the mother's boyfriend, Justin Stein. He was arrested and charged with Charlize's murder the same day.
He shot twice
The nine-year-old girl was found inside a plastic barrel on the banks of the Colo River, northwest of Sydney.
It was wrapped in plastic and covered with about 100 kilograms of sand. She was shot twice with a hunting rifle – in the face and back.
The jury believes the murder occurred on the evening of January 11 or early in the morning the next day, while Charlize and Justin Stein were alone on the property in the Blue Mountains.
The mother is said to have spent the night in a caravan an hour and a half away guardian.
“Can I come with Dad, Mom?” she said. “I said, 'Yes, of course,'” Calista Moten's mother, the clerk, explained in court Sydney Morning Herald.
Justin Stein was not Charles Moten's biological father.
Calista explained that her boyfriend sent her a text message on the evening of January 11, telling her that Charlize was playing and watching TV while he was cooking chicken for dinner.
At about 10 a.m. the next day, he wrote that he was on his way out, but that Charlize was not feeling well and was still asleep.
He took his mother in the caravan, and it emerged in court that they had gone to central Sydney to buy drugs, he writes Sydney Morning Herald.
When they returned home to the Blue Mountains in the evening, Charlize was not there. Justin Stein is said to have suggested she might have been kidnapped by some of his criminal connections. Callista said in court that he warned her not to call the police in case they wanted to kill her.
On January 14, 2022, I called anyway. She said in the emergency call that she last saw Charlize two days ago. “She was here. I wasn't here, my partner was here,” she continued.
Bought sandbags
Coroners found very high doses of Seroquel, That Justin Stein has been discharged from the hospital due to Charlize's schizophrenia.
Prosecutors believe the dose was high enough to sedate her, and one of their theories is that Justin Stein killed her because the pills made her sick.
During the month-long trial, the 33-year-old admitted that he disposed of the plastic barrel in which Charlize was found dead.
However, he blamed the murder on his then-girlfriend, the nine-year-old's mother.
She denied having anything to do with the murder, and broke down in tears in court, locals wrote 9 news.
Prosecutor Ken McKay called the allegations “nonsense and nonsense.”
– He told the truth that he killed her.
Police released several surveillance photos showing Stein driving around Sydney with Charlize hidden in the back of his pickup truck. According to them, he must have been looking for a suitable place to dispose of the body.
Surveillance photos were also released showing Stein buying five 20-kilogram bags of sand from the Bunnings hardware store, he wrote. daily Mail.
On August 23, it will become clear what kind of punishment he will receive for the murder.
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