The day after the body of 7-year-old Jorelys Rivera was found in a trash compactor and the day before he was charged with her murder, 20-year-old maintenance man Ryan Brunn repeatedly told investigators he knew nothing about the child's death and the disposal of her body.
Brunn committed suicide in state prison last week, two days after he pleaded guilty to the Dec. 2 murder and sexual molestation of Jorelys at the River Ridge apartments in Canton.
His denials were revealed in a video of a GBI interview that took place five days after she disappeared. The video was released Thursday.
Brunn, who worked and lived at the complex, became a suspect when he first lied to investigators about not going to the trash compactor Friday night, hours after Jorelys was last seen on a playground at the complex.
During his sentencing hearing last week, Brunn said he killed the girl in an empty apartment around 5 p.m. that afternoon, after sexually molesting her. He killed her by slashing her throat, he said, and by hitting her in the head with a roller skate. He then dumped her body in the compactor.
In the interview and polygraph test with Keith Sitton, GBI special agent in charge of the polygraph unit, Brunn appears nervous at times, pulling at his clothes and several times coughing into a closed fist as if to clear his throat. Other times, he seems to relax as Sitton engages him in casual conversation.
Sitton asks him about dropping out of school in the 10th grade, and tells him he should consider going back to high school. “You’re just 20," Sitton says. "It’s not too late to go back."
He asks about an old girl friend Brunn still stays in touch with, and kids him that he must still think he's got a "chance" with her. He tells Brunn it's OK to admit he smokes pot -- "This isn't a drug investigation." Brunn tells him he smokes pot about once a day.
At the beginning of the interview and the three polygraph tests that take about an hour and a half, Sitton asks Brunn: “Have you ever had a polygraph before?”
“No," says Brunn. “I’ve never been in trouble before.”
“Well, you’re not necessarily in trouble,” says Sitton.
Sitton then asks Brunn if he made any statements to investigators the day before that may not have been accurate. Brunn says he lied to investigators when he told them he hadn’t gone to the trash compactor Friday night after he returned from a shopping trip to Wal-Mart.
He says he first lied because he had seen a report on television that afternoon that Jorelys' body had been found in the trash compactor at the apartment complex, and he was afraid he’d be a suspect if he told investigators he had been at the compactor that night.
He says it was a routine for him to operate the compactor at night and on weekends because he got paid extra do it. When he realized from the TV report that the missing child's body had been found in the compactor, he says, “I thought I crushed her.”
The GBI agent asks Brunn if he had been ever been accused of “doing something like this” before? Brunn says no, he never had.
“Have there ever been any allegations of molesting, fondling, anything?” asks Sitton.
“No,” says Brunn.
Sitton then hooks Brunn to the polygraph monitor, and asks him the same nine questions three times, taking a break between sessions.
He asks him several direct questions about Jorelys.
“Did you participate in any way in the death of that girl?”
“No.”
“Did you cause the death of that girl?”
“No.”
“Did you participate in any way with disposing of that girl?”
“No.”
“Do you know for sure who caused the death of that girl?”
“No.”
During Brunn’s sentencing last week, he spoke in a voice so soft at times it was difficult to hear his responses to a judge’s questions about his molestation and murder of Jorelys. He told the the judge the killing and molestation were "hard" to talk about.
In the GBI interview that day, Brunn spoke clearly the first time through the nine questions. By the third time, his answers were barely audible.
Sitton told Brunn before the test he would tell him the result at the end.
At the end of the session, Sitton leaves the room for a few minutes, and Brunn leaves to smoke a cigarette. When Sitton returns with a second GBI agent, Dustin Hamby, Sitton tells Brunn he’s concerned about the results.
“There’s something you’re not telling us,” says Sitton. “What is it you’re holding back? Because we’re trying to solve this thing.”
He tells Brunn he’s concerned about his pot smoking.
“[Smoking pot] gets me high,” says Brunn. “It doesn’t make me crazy.”
Sitton tells Brunn the two questions he did poorly on were, Did he participate in death of the girl? And, did he dispose of the body? “You’re not doing good on this test,” says Sitton.
“I’m not holding back,” says Brunn. “I promise you. I’ll take the test again.”
At that point, Hamby asks Brunn about his claim that he had never been questioned about sexual molestation of a child before. He tells Brunn that their investigation found he was accused of sexually fondling a young girl in Virginia before he moved to Georgia.
“They put things in that child’s head,” Brunn tells the agents. “I didn’t do nothing to that little Spanish girl [Jorelys], and I didn’t do nothing to that [other] girl.”
The interview appears to continue, but the tape ends. The next day, Brunn was arrested and charged with the sexual molestation and murder of Jorelys Rivera.
About the Author
