A 20-year-old Georgia man has been sentenced to life in prison without parole after admitting to murdering a 7-year-old girl.

The man, who was the groundskeeper at an apartment complex, said he had been viewing child pornography and thought he could take the girl to a vacant apartment to engage in a sexual act. He said he had not premeditated her killing.

He told the judge in a Cherokee County, Georgia, courtroom how he enticed the girl to leave her apartment in the complex in Canton, Georgia, and enter the vacant unit. He found a roller skate that he knew belonged to her and showed her a photo of it to see if she could identify it. When she said it was hers, he instructed her to follow him to retrieve it.

Instead, he said fear set it when he recognized she might inform an adult about what happened.

He said he killed her and hid her body in bed linens, then took it to the trash compactor at the apartment complex.

Two days after her death, as searchers combed the area looking for the girl, he wrote a note indicating her body had been thrown in the trash. A witness said the man had been seen at the trash compactor, and a study of his handwriting and evidence found in the apartment led to his arrest.

The man would have faced the death penalty if convicted in a trial. Instead, he pleaded guilty to a variety of charges, including murder, enticing a child for indecent purposes, sexual exploitation of children and child molestation. At times a plea agreement can be advantageous to a defendant if they do not think they will be acquitted.

Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Guilty plea, life sentence in Jorelys Rivera murder," Andria Simmons and Jeffry Scott, Jan. 18, 2012