Search for a better life ends in horror

Sometime around 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 2, just minutes after Jorelys left the playground and went home to get a drink, police said, the new maintenance man either lured the friendly child or dragged her to a vacant apartment nearby, police said. There, he beat, raped and stabbed her to death, authorities said.

Three days later, her body was found stuffed in a trash compactor.

The alleged snatching and killing of a child by a stranger is among the rarest of crimes. That, along with the grisly circumstances of the killing and the fact that her body was tossed away and compacted like yesterday’s trash, sent waves of revulsion, then fear through the community.

Ryan Brunn, on the job just four weeks, was almost immediately cast under suspicion by neighbors, who told authorities he acted oddly. That he had access to the vacant apartments and to the compactor put him under the investigative microscope. He was arrested Wednesday and charged with murder.

“This was a very calculated and planned crime,” said Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vernon Keenan after announcing the arrest. He said investigators would piece together the past few years of the 20-year-old suspect’s life to see if there are any other crimes in his past.

Brunn came to the complex from his North Georgia home in Dahlonega, having gotten his own apartment after being hired as a maintenance man at River Ridge. His sister even teased him on Facebook on Nov. 6, the day after he moved in, writing, “someone grew up? moving from mommy?.....good boy rye.”

Jorelys Rivera’s family hadn’t been in the complex long either.

Six months ago, her mother, Joselinne, moved with her three girls from another Canton complex. She had similar self-improvement goals in mind. The River Ridge apartments, a cluster of three-story buildings, were clean, near shopping and a 10-minute drive from her overnight job at the Pilgrim’s Pride chicken plant. A month ago, the family moved again within the complex to a ground-floor unit within sight of a small playground where Jorelys and her two younger sisters could play.

Joselinne Rivera moved to Georgia from Puerto Rico about three years ago, said her brother, Blas Rivera Jr.

“She came here to progress her life, to make a better life,” he said. “She wanted to make it all good for her girls.”

But others contend she did not pay enough attention to the girls, and state authorities took the children into custody after Jorelys went missing. “The consensus of the residents in the complex [is] that no one ever supervises the children,” says a state Department of Family and Children Services report. It also states that Jorelys’ younger sister often walked around wearing little and almost got hit by a car while wandering in the parking lot.

Late afternoon Thursday, Blas Rivera was standing in the playground where his niece was last spotted six days earlier. Rivera was chaperoning one of Jorelys’ two younger siblings. The girls had just been returned to the family after being taken into custody days earlier by state DFCS officials.

Joselinne Rivera has said little publicly since the killing and was advised by police Friday to call off a press conference.

Earlier, she told WXIA-Channel 11, “I am a very good mother. I’m a very hardworking mother. My kids have everything they need. Everything is in order. They have their room. They have their food. They don’t want for anything.”

Sometime after 5 p.m. Dec. 2, two of the Rivera girls were at the playground, supposedly being watched by a teenage baby sitter. It is unclear whether the teen was at the playground or at the Riveras’ home. Jorelys left the playground, saying she was going home to get a soft drink, police said.

According to authorities, Joselinne Rivera and another woman who lives there were sleeping at the time because they work the 10:15 p.m. to 7:15 a.m. shift at the chicken plant. Sometime between 5:30 and 6 p.m., the family noticed Jorelys was missing and started to look for her.

Elizabeth Mata, who lives in the building across from the Riveras, heard a knock on her door about 6 p.m. “[Jorelys’] little sister was with her mother,” Mata recalled. “Her mother nudged her and she asked, ‘Is my sister here?’”

Mata said she and two of her children later joined in the search of the area.

Brooke Barnes, one of Mata’s daughters, said she has seen the Rivera children, and many others, run around unsupervised. But, she said, she was not judging the mother.

“She’s trying to work hard to make ends meet to get a better life for her kids,” Barnes said.

Barnes said she had often noticed Brunn driving around in his golf cart on his maintenance rounds.

Heather Johnson Coker lives in a ground-floor apartment in the building next to the Riveras’. Her unit is a floor above the vacant unit where Jorelys was killed and maybe 35 yards from the playground.

Coker often walks her tiny Pomeranian, which is a hit with the neighborhood children, including the Rivera sisters. Coker said Jorelys and her younger sister were often outside. “The girl who was supposed to watch them was always inside with the baby.”

Jorelys “was a very friendly girl,” Coker said. “She’d walk up to anybody and start talking to them.”

Coker also often talked to Brunn, who “seemed like a normal guy trying to make a living.”

But a couple of weeks ago, she said Brunn told her something that seemed very odd. She said a 12-year-old boy was missing and apartment workers were trying to get the word out to residents. During that conversation, Coker said, “He said, ‘With all the empty apartments, it’d be easy to break in and do something to one of these kids.’ He said that.”

Friends who know Brunn said his family moved to Dahlonega about eight years ago from New York. Brunn and four siblings were foster children before they were adopted. Their adoptive mother lived on an adoption stipend from the state of New York, according to bankruptcy filings. He was home schooled and was a big sports fan, frequently playing basketball.

He played on the football and basketball teams at War Hill Christian Academy in Dawsonville. Unlike many of the home-schooling parents, who want to be very involved in their child’s activities, Brunn’s parents were rarely if ever seen at games, the headmaster said.

Although he was athletic, a couple of his friends said, Brunn came across as meek.

He had many friends on Facebook, especially girls, but never seemed to have a girlfriend, said Cody Rider, 20, a friend who lived with the Brunn family for three months.

“I never thought he would do anything like this,” said Rider of the accusations that Brunn faces. “Ryan was a kind-hearted person. But anybody can fool you.”

Two of Brunn’s brothers have gotten into trouble, getting arrested on theft charges, but Brunn’s record seems to be clear, authorities said.

Brunn worked at a Krystal and often was bored with his life in North Georgia, repeatedly saying so on his Facebook site. “Bored, nothin to do in this hell hole of a town!!” Brunn wrote in October.

Around that time, he wrote, “New job, apt, life coming soon can’t wait. ima miss you DAHLONEGA tho.”

Brunn might have been relatively unremarkable in appearance but he made an impression on residents only a month into the job. The slight young man was omnipresent in his cart, apparently enjoying his newfound responsibility.

One resident remembers him helping jump-start her roommate’s car.

But after the killing, several residents went to police with his name. Coker told police of his odd statement. And Jordan Wheeless, who lives in the apartment next to Brunn, recalled that he was walking to the trash compactor the night after the girl disappeared when he saw his neighbor with a two-by-four, pushing down the garbage.

“He said, ‘Wait a second,’ ” Wheeless recalled. “He wasn’t nervous or anything. At the time, I just thought he was doing his job as a maintenance man.”

Investigators questioned Brunn twice after the body was found Monday. By Tuesday night, he was a wreck.

John Tosso, who lives in that building and who had seen Brunn once or twice before, passed by an animated Brunn, who was talking to two other maintenance men. “He was showing us his wrists saying, ‘I didn’t do it!’ ”

Then, he said, Brunn turned to him. “He said he thought I was with him that night,” Tosso said. But, Tosso said, he had been nowhere around Brunn.

In that moment, Tosso said, “I knew something was wrong.”

Staff writer Craig Schneider contributed to this article.