The final words of Harold Wayne Nichols echoed through the death chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville just before 10:39 a. m. Thursday.
“To the people I’ve harmed, I’m sorry. To my family, know that I love you. I know where I’m going.
I’m ready to go home,” the 64-year-old former U. S. Army veteran said as a lethal dose of pentobarbital entered his veins.
With that, Tennessee carried out the execution of a man who confessed to the 1988 rape and murder of 20-year-old Karen Pulley, closing a case that haunted the Chattanooga community for more than three decades.
The execution proceeded after Governor Bill Lee denied clemency on December 9th, and the U. S. Supreme Court declined to issue a stay.
Nichols was pronounced dead at 10:39 a. m. , marking the 10th execution in Tennessee since the state resumed capital punishment in 2018.
Outside the prison, anti-death penalty protesters gathered, with one faith-based prison ministry worker who had met Nichols insisting that rehabilitation remained the proper response to violent crime. Inside the chamber, spiritual adviser J. R.
Davis stood beside Nichols as they recited the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, their voices straining at points before the final amen.
The case against Harold Wayne Nichols began on a quiet September night in 1988. Karen Elise Pulley was a 20-year-old student at Chattanooga State Community College, working toward a career as a paralegal. She had recently completed Bible College, and her faith was central to her identity.
Those who knew her described her as bubbly, selfless, and happy, a young woman with a mischievous streak who made every room feel lighter. On the night of September 30th, 1988, she was asleep in her Brainerd apartment when Nichols entered through a bathroom window.
Nichols had been watching the apartment for two nights. On September 29th, he observed Karen’s roommate Lori preparing for her night shift through a crack in the window blinds. He waited until she left, then walked away.
He returned the following night, confirmed Karen was alone, and moved inside. Once in the home, he located a length of 2×4 lumber and carried it with him as he climbed the stairs toward Karen’s bedroom. Court records confirm that Karen fought back, but the attack was sudden and violent.
The official cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, resulting in skull fractures and severe brain injuries.
The morning after the attack, Karen’s roommate Susan Saunders Massey came home and found her alive but unconscious on the bedroom floor. Emergency services were called immediately. The responding EMT, a veteran of combat in Vietnam, later told Karen’s family that in all his years, including everything he had witnessed during the war, he had never encountered a scene like that one.
Karen Pulley was transported to the hospital and died later that same day. She was 20 years old.
Nichols’ pattern of violence did not end with Karen’s death. From September 30th, 1988 through January 3rd, 1989, he targeted at least 12 women across multiple neighborhoods in the Chattanooga area. His approach was consistent, women who were alone in situations where they had no warning and no immediate help available.
Both the Chattanooga Police Department and the East Ridge Police Department were separately tracking what appeared to be a pattern of coordinated offenses. Victims across multiple cases described the same physical detail, a man with red hair. The press would eventually refer to him as the red-headed stranger.
The breakthrough came from an unlikely source. On January 5th, 1989, East Ridge Police Captain Larry Holland received an anonymous phone call. The caller alleged that Harold Wayne Nichols was the man responsible for the series of attacks and provided his date of birth.
The caller was later identified as Chuck Mall, a man whose personal jealousy over Nichols’ close friendship with his boyfriend Larry Kilgore had driven him to make the call. It was not a detective’s breakthrough. It was a personal dispute that accidentally cracked open one of the most active criminal cases in Chattanooga’s recent history.
A routine background check on Nichols immediately surfaced his 1984 conviction for attempted sexual assault. Officers moved quickly, arresting Nichols that same evening. Investigators began showing photo lineups to victims, and within hours, multiple positive identifications were made.
At 8:00 p. m. , Nichols was transported to Chattanooga Police Department Headquarters, where Detective Richard Hack conducted a videotaped interview.
During that session, Nichols confessed to the attack on Karen Pulley. He described the layout of her home and bedroom in detail, identified his entry point, laid out the facts of what happened that night, and disclosed where he had disposed of the weapon afterward.
The trial of Harold Wayne Nichols opened on May 7th, 1990, in Hamilton County Criminal Court. Because of significant public attention surrounding the case, the court granted a change of venue for jury selection only, bringing jurors from Sumner County. Defense attorneys moved immediately to suppress the videotape confession, the single most damaging piece of evidence against their client.
The court denied the motion. With that ruling, Nichols changed course and entered guilty pleas to first-degree felony murder, aggravated rape, and first-degree burglary. The case moved directly into the sentencing phase.
During the sentencing phase, District Attorney Steve Bevel presented two statutory aggravating circumstances under Tennessee law. First, Nichols had five prior convictions for aggravated offenses against four separate victims. Second, Karen Pulley’s murder occurred during the commission of a felony burglary.
The defense called several witnesses, including Nichols’ wife Joann, who testified about his character and described their marriage as genuinely happy. Three reverends testified about his upbringing and character. Nichols took the stand himself, telling the jury he understood that what he had done was wrong and terrible.
He said a strange feeling had compelled him and that he had been unable to stop it.
On cross-examination, the prosecution asked him plainly whether he would have continued had he not been arrested. He said yes. In his closing argument, District Attorney Bevel stood before the jury and displayed two images.
The first was an enlarged portrait of Karen Pulley, labeled September 29th, 1988. The second was an image from the crime scene, labeled September 30th, 1988. He asked the jury to show Harold Wayne Nichols the same mercy he had shown her.
On May 12th, 1990, after deliberating for less than two hours, the jury returned a verdict of death. The judge followed the jury’s recommendation.
What happened immediately after the verdict was something no one in that courtroom anticipated. Karen Pulley’s mother Ann stood up and asked to speak with Nichols face-to-face. The two of them walked into the jury room together and closed the door.
When she came back out, she told him she forgave him, not for his sake, but because she refused to carry that weight for the rest of her life. She visited him twice more in jail after that. On one of those visits, she gave him a Bible.
Inside, she had inscribed it with a personal note and underlined her daughter’s favorite verses. Harold Wayne Nichols kept that Bible for the remaining 35 years of his life.
The death sentence handed down on May 12th, 1990, did not end the legal fight. It started one that would last longer than Karen Pulley had been alive. In 1994, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the death sentence.
In January 1995, the U. S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.
The appeals continued through federal habeas corpus petitions and resentencing proceedings. While those legal proceedings moved through the courts, Nichols was living out his sentence at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, working maintenance on Unit 2, handling plumbing and electrical repairs on death row.
People who encountered Nichols during those years consistently described a man who appeared genuinely remorseful and changed from who he had been in 1988. Two former Hamilton County prosecutors who had worked the original case publicly stated their support for clemency, pointing to his conduct over three decades. Six of the original jurors submitted statements either supporting life without parole or indicating they had reconsidered their position on the death sentence.
In 2018, Hamilton County District Attorneys reached an agreement that would have effectively resentenced Nichols to life without parole. The judge refused to accept it.
Nichols had originally selected the electric chair as his method of execution, an option available to Tennessee inmates convicted before January 1999. When the state asked him to confirm his choice in 2025, he let the deadline pass without responding. Under state law, that default meant lethal injection.
His first execution date had been set for August 2020, but Governor Bill Lee granted a stay due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, a statewide review found that drugs used in prior Tennessee executions had not been properly tested, pausing executions. A new single-𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 pentobarbital protocol was approved in December 2024.
In March 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court set a new execution date, December 11th, 2025. On December 9th, Governor Lee formally denied clemency, the seventh execution he had allowed since taking office. The U.
S. Supreme Court declined to issue a stay. Every door had closed.
Ann and Chuck Pulley, Karen’s parents, never lived to see this day. Both had passed away in the years after their daughter’s death. On December 11th, 2025, the justice they never witnessed was carried out.
Nichols woke before dawn on the day of his execution. He showered, received visitors, and waited. His final meal had been served the previous evening, beef brisket, coleslaw, a baked potato, onion rings, deviled eggs, cheese biscuits, and fruit tea.
While the execution took place, the Pulley family held a celebration of Karen’s life at home. Lizette Monroe, Karen’s sister, could not attend. Her husband Jeff Monroe addressed the press, thanking Detective Richard Hack, the Chattanooga Police Department, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office, and the Department of Corrections by name.
Defense Attorney Deborah Drew said the execution sent a message that redemption deserves no mercy. J. R.
Davis, the spiritual adviser, said he believed Nichols’ transformation over 35 years was genuine. Karen Pulley was 20 years old, a student, a sister, a person of faith, taken from her own bedroom by a man the system had already identified, prosecuted, and released. Whether December 11th, 2025 was justice remains a question for each person to decide.
The case of Harold Wayne Nichols is now closed, but the memory of Karen Elise Pulley endures.
