GBI re-interviewed Brunn following guilty plea, tape shows

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By Alexis Stevens

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Moments after Ryan Brunn admitted he had killed 7-year-old Jorelys Rivera, he agreed to be re-interviewed by GBI agents wanting more insight into the killer's actions.

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Channel 2 Action News "I regret everything I did," Brunn said in the videotaped interview.

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At the end of the three-hour interview, Brunn invited the agents to visit him in prison. But he hanged himself before they got the chance.

"I regret everything I did," Brunn said in the videotaped interview, obtained by Channel 2 Action News. But the 20-year-old refused to admit that he had sexually assaulted Jorelys, despite evidence suggesting otherwise.

Jorelys' body was found Dec. 5 in a trash compactor at the Cherokee County apartment complex where she lived with her mother and two younger sisters. The first-grader had been reported missing the night of Dec. 2, when she disappeared from the playground across the street from her building.

Brunn, a maintenance worker at the complex, was among those who searched for the girl. He was arrested and charged with her death two days after her body was found.

In the interview tape released Monday, Brunn told two GBI agents he hadn't planned to grab Jorelys, but he admitted he made her disrobe and beat her. Initially, Brunn denied being interested in young girls when questioned.

But when told two young girls in his past had accused him of groping them, Brunn admitted molesting girls while babysitting years earlier.

"I guess I did it more than one time; I guess I did a few times, but it wasn't in the same day," Brunn said.

Two days after his guilty plea, Brunn was found unresponsive in his cell at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. Investigators determined Brunn had hanged himself with his prison-issued sweatshirt.