Georgia man who admitted murdering girl found dead in apparent suicide

1-19-2012 Georgia:

Atlanta (CNN) -- Ryan Brunn, the man who this week was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to murdering a Georgia girl, apparently killed himself in his prison cell Thursday, a corrections spokeswoman said.

Georgia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kristen Stancil said that Brunn was found unresponsive at 4:15 p.m. in his cell at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. Brunn was pronounced dead at a hospital at 5:37 p.m. due to an apparent suicide, she said.

The case since has been referred to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, according to Stancil.

Brunn had entered a guilty plea Tuesday at a hearing in a Cherokee County courthouse, during which he described in detail how he enticed, molested and killed 7-year-old Jorelys Rivera. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole, avoiding a potential death sentence by lethal injection.

The girl's father, Ricardo Galarza, told CNN en Espanol that news of Brunn's death partly made him "feel good but, on the other hand, it doesn't because my daughter will never be with me again."

Galarza said that he felt that a lifetime of Brunn being watched after, "eating three times a day (and) sleeping with air conditioning" while in prison was not enough.

"What I wanted was for them to put him in the electric chair and burn him," the father said. "I would have taken him there myself and prepared it, so he would burn."

Jorelys' mangled body was found in a trash compactor three days after she went missing on December 2 from an apartment complex in Canton, about 40 miles north of Atlanta.

According to the indictment, Jorelys was severely beaten and stabbed repeatedly in the face, neck and chest.

Brunn, 20, who worked as a maintenance man at the same apartment complex, was arrested on December 7 and charged with the crime.

Last week, Brunn was indicted on 13 counts including murder, aggravated assault, cruelty to children, aggravated child molestation, enticing a child for indecent purposes, false imprisonment, abandonment of a dead body, making a false statement and sexual exploitation of children.

He told the court Tuesday that he had never talked to Jorelys before the day of her murder. He said he devised a plan after he found one of her skates.

Brunn took a picture of the skate and approached her with it, asking if the skate was hers. She said yes, and Brunn promised to take her to it.

Instead, he took her to an empty apartment and instructed Jorelys to pull down her pants. He then put tape over her face and cut her throat with a razor. At this point, she was still alive, he told the court.

He said that he then took Jorelys to the bathroom and beat her to death with the skate. He said he did not have sex with the girl.

Increasingly, Brunn told the court, he grew concerned about what he had done. So he took a receipt, wrote on the back of it, "She is in the trash can," and taped it to the compactor.

He admitted lying to investigators who had questioned him about the case. Brunn said he knew right from wrong, adding he "never had an idea of killing a child in my life."

"I'd like to apologize for everything I've done, and I do deserve everything that you're about to give me," he said in court. ..Source.. by CNN Wire Staff

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Inside Ryan Brunn's mind (Video on original article)

2-7-2012 Georgia:

ATLANTA -- When Ryan Brunn pled guilty to the murder of 7 year old Jorelys Rivera he told the court in detail how he abducted her and killed her. Almost immediately after that plea, GBI Agents Dustin Hamby and Brian Whidby spent more than two hours picking Brunn's brain, trying to learn as much as they could about him, to help them in future cases. The GBI just released that video interview.

Brunn explained to the agents that he started looking at child pornography on the internet a couple of years ago when he lived with his mother in Dahlonega. "I'm not gonna say it just popped up one time," he said. "It was advertisements and things I've seen on the internet and also I've just clicked on them."

The agents repeatedly questioned Brunn about allegations that he had fondled other children when he lived in Virginia and then Dahlonega. Eventually Brunn admitted it. "I guess I did it more than one time," he said. "I guess I did it a few times but it wasn't on the same day."

But what made him take the giant leap from fondling a child to molesting and brutally killing Jorelys Rivera? Could it have been something in his past? "Is there anything in your past? Hamby asked him. "I wasn't molested," Brunn responded. "Are you sure about that?" the agent asked. "I'm pretty sure, that I can recall, I wasn't," Brunn said.

Brunn told the agents he was always attracted to children and started looking at child porn on the internet about a year ago when he lived with his mother in Dahlonega. But he said he never acted out, he never had sexual intentions until one moment in time on December 2nd, the day he coaxed Jorelys into a vacant apartment by stealing her roller blade. "When I seen her skate down on the ground I thought about it that day," he said. "I didn't never think nothing like that before."

The only remorse he showed in the interview was for himself. One of his regrets was not being able to watch the Super Bowl. "I regret everything I did," he said. "I wish I was still working and I wish I could watch the Giants win the Super Bowl, but I guess I'm not going to do that."

When the interview was over, Brunn uttered these now ominous words to the two agents: "You all wanna come see me in prison? Feel free."

The interview took place on January 17, 2012. Two days later Ryan Brunn was found dead in his cell at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison. He hanged himself. There was no indication in the interview that he had any suicidal tendencies. ..Source.. by CNN