How child killer Justin Stein will be forever watching his back when he's jailed for Charlise Mutten's murder - despite prison bosses hiding him away in protective custody

Justin Stein blinked rapidly as he was pronounced a child killer on Wednesday and then swayed sideways trying to stand for the jury, as if the truth of being a convicted murderer was just taking hold.

But by Thursday morning, waking in his cell at the vast Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre in western Sydney, the reality would have well and truly sunk in. 

The 34-year-old's trips from the MRRC in Silverwater to Parramatta Court for the trial and jury's deliberation went for six weeks.  

Being brought up handcuffed from the cells to Court 5 might have given Stein a feeling of dread at the looming verdict, but offered some relief from the monotony back in jail. 

Now that's over, Stein is in the prison's protection wing and - as a child killer - will be among the most reviled inmates along with child sex offenders. 

During the trial, Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC asked Stein if he knew why Charlise was clothed but not wearing underwear when she was sleeping in his bed after she became ill and started vomiting on the eve of her murder on January 10, 2022.

Charlise was staying alone with Stein at his family property in Mt Wilson.

Stein was also asked if he had given Charlise the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel, which he took for his schizophrenia.  The drug was found in her system after her death.  

Stein denied any knowledge or culpability about these events.

He will be in protection at Silverwater for nine more weeks until he is sentenced on August 23, when he will again be taken in a prison van to court, the location yet to be determined.

Justice Helen Wilson will sentence Stein, taking into account the fact his victim was a child under 10 years who was in his care as a defacto stepfather.

Charlise had been holidaying with her mother Kallista, Stein's then fiancée, over Christmas and New Year at the Stein family's  three residences when she was drugged, then shot in the face with a rifle.

Stein also faces a charge of interfering with a corpse, the maximum penalty for which is just two years.

But the pitiful facts of how Charlise was put into a barrel and dumped could play into his length of the sentence.

The schoolgirl's 33.5kg body was wrapped in a bag and a tarpaulin, bound with tape and put head first into barrel meant for chemicals or foodstuffs.

About 100kg of sand Stein bought at Bunnings was poured over the child and the lid screwed back on before it was, presumably, backed into the bush on the Colo River bank and rolled off to a spot where it wedged between tree trunks.

The barrel was there for five days in January 2022 before police found it and arrested Stein.

The nature of Charlise's death, and the publicity that has come with it, should keep the child killer in protection for some time.

Stein, who is facing several decades in prison, will be assigned by a Corrective Services NSW committee to his 'jail of sentence'.

This will be one of the state's maximum security prisons, Goulburn, Lithgow, or the NSW Mid North Coast Correctional Centre at Kempsey.

This is the big time. Stein, not a tall or muscular man and still quite young-looking for someone in their mid-30s, will come face-to-face with career criminals, drug dealers, violent offenders and murderers who don't take kindly to child killers.

He is a softly spoken, privately educated man from wealthy antique dealer parents and although he has served time previously for trafficking cocaine, his shorter sentence then meant a medium or minimum security environment.

He is a diagnosed schizophrenic and takes buprenorphine for a long-standing heroin addiction.

Life for Stein will become a tedium of days blurring into one another, of wearing prison green clothing right down to his underwear, of mornings in his cell with the standard breakfast pack of cereal, bread, jam and a carton of milk.

Then he'll be allowed into a yard, back into his cell at lunchtime for sandwiches and a piece of fruit, out into the yard again and then back behind bars at 3pm with dinner which will be meat or fish and vegetables served in a foil tray.

Corrective Services Industries, staffed by inmates, make 'nutritionally balanced' meals labelled with enticing names such as 'Thai vegetable curry' and 'chicken polenta' and 'ginger beef salad'.

But inmates complain they don't have much taste and yearn for salty, greasy treats such as McDonalds, which they can never have.

With dinner in hand, Stein will have 17 hours to spend each night in his 3m x 5m cell. He will have access to a bolted TV and books.

Because he is facing a lengthy sentence, Stein will have the opportunity to study but it is believed he has some learning difficulties which may hamper that.

If he is sentenced to Lithgow Correctional Centre, he is up for a long series of icy winters in the Blue Mountains prison, where freezing winds are known to whip through the yards.

If he goes to Goulburn, it is unlikely he'd be sent into the High Risk Management Security Correctional Centre there known as Supermax which is for violent or problem inmates.

He may end up on the Circle in the main prison which has been home to many lifers, including the Anita Cobby killers, now in their 50s and 60s, who have so far served 38 years of their 'cemented in' life sentence for the beauty queen's 1986 murder.

A person found guilty of murder in NSW can be imprisoned for life, however the judge may impose a sentence for a specific amount of time, and with a non-parole period as a minimum term.