Now That Brunn Is Done

When I was a little girl, my grandmother told me I should be careful with my heart. I wore it on my sleeve for all the world to see. I’d cry just because someone else was crying. If a sibling had a spanking coming I would run and hide until it was over. Raised voices would send me into quivers. When it came time to put down a beloved pet, I practically needed sedation. Granny reminded me often that my empathy would choke me one day and I would wish I had hardened up a little. Life, she assured me, would inevitably require apathy in large doses or disappointment and tears would be my constant companion. 

My grandmother was right. 

It has taken me 38 years, however, to understand what she was trying to teach me.

I have several hobbies. The one I am most embarrassed about is how voraciously I follow crimes against children in the news. It’s rather morbid and hard to explain to people. I was front-and-center for the Casey Anthony trial. I had (and still have) an email alert set up for Skyla Whitaker and Taylor Paschal-Placker. Each night finds me praying for the safe return of Kyron Horman and all the many young boys and girls like him who simply vanish. I pray for their families as well.

As much as those cases affect me, however, I was never close to the scene of a crime against a child. I always felt relatively safe, like northwest Georgia was somehow impervious and that our children were protected in our corner of the world. Canton is a town where complete strangers still hold the door open, ask you about your day, help you with a flat tire, and say please and thank you. It’s quiet, beautiful, and embodies the very spirit of Southern hospitality done right. 

I felt like nothing could destroy the tranquility of small town life here.

Until now.

I did not know Jorelys Rivera. I did not know her family or her neighbors. The only thing I knew about her was that she lived one town over and she was missing. I helped search for her. When her destroyed body was found I attended the vigils, the viewings and the funeral. The image of her lying there in her open casket, mere inches from me, is something that haunts my sleep even now. 

Because suddenly, see, my hobby of following crimes against children on the news and via nonfiction books was slapping me in the face. There she was, flesh, hair and lifeless. I had never heard her laugh, but I knew it would have been infectious. I’d never heard her voice, but I was sure it was beautiful. I’d never heard her heartbeat, but I was sure she had been alive and poised to become anyone she wanted to be. I stood there staring at her, choking on my empathy, just as Granny warned me I would.

Ryan Brunn confessed to killing Jorelys Rivera. He confessed to doing things to her tiny little body that no living creature should endure. Brunn went into graphic detail and shed no tears. He was devoid of emotion, from what I could see, and his voice did not crack over the words he uttered. Jorelys wasn’t his first victim. I don’t think she would have been his last. 

Speaking of Brunn brings me back around to apathy.

When I read that he had killed himself—I felt nothing. I felt no sorrow for him. I felt no sympathy, no worry, no sadness, no joy and no relief. He had been sentenced to LIFE in prison without parole. A judge granted him LIFE with three meals, a bed, the possibility of continuing his education, corresponding with desperate women (or men) who fell in love with him after reading about his crime, and laughing at the television/Internet. He was given LIFE. A chance to be reborn and reinvented in prison.

Brunn granted Jorelys none of those things, even when she asked him if she could go home.

As his suicide rattled around in my brain for a while I finally understood the lesson my grandmother was trying to teach me. There are people deserving of tears and empathy. People like Jorelys and her devastated family. At the same time, there are people deserving of apathy and no quarter should be given to those people.

Ryan Brunn died by his own hand, the very hand that demolished a child and left behind a ruptured family, shattered mother and father, and a stunned community. It seems unfair that he was able to call the shots until the very end and that his suffering, assuming one such as himself can suffer, was minimal at best. A huge part of me wishes he had been subjected to the same torture and torment he subjected that little girl to and died as terrified as she did. 

The tiniest amount of emotion I can summon with regard to this animal is for HIS family. 

I can’t begin to imagine how it must feel to know your loved one was capable of something so grotesque.

I pray that the Brunn family can find the same apathy I have found at the mention of Ryan’s name. 

He is deserving of nothing more.