NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Harold Wayne Nichols, the man who terrorized Chattanooga for months in the late 1980s and brutally murdered 21-year-old Karen Elise Pulley, was executed by lethal injection Thursday morning at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. He was pronounced dead at 10:39 a. m.
, bringing an end to more than 35 years on death row and nearly four decades of anguish for the victims’ families.
Nichols, 64, had spent over three decades fighting to avoid the sentence that a jury handed down in 1990. But in the final moments, his voice remained steady as he addressed those who had gathered to witness his death.
“To the people I’ve harmed, I’m sorry. To my family, know that I love you. To my friends, I love each one of you.
I know where I’m going. I’m ready to go home,” Nichols said from the gurney.
The journey to that execution chamber began long before the sun rose over Tennessee on Thursday. It started on a quiet September night in 1988, when Nichols, then 28, parked his car in the Brainerd neighborhood of Chattanooga and watched a house where three women lived.
He waited until one roommate left, then slipped through a small bathroom window armed with a 2×4 piece of lumber. Karen Pulley was asleep upstairs. She never heard him coming.
Nichols slammed the board into her head, then sexually assaulted her as she fought to survive.
When he finished, he struck her again and again until she stopped moving. He ransacked the home, took what he wanted, and disappeared into the night. Paramedics found Karen still clinging to life the next morning, but she never regained consciousness and died the following day.
Investigators had no suspect and no weapon. But Nichols was far from done. Just three weeks later, in the early hours of October 20, 1988, he struck again in Tonia, a neighborhood on the edge of Chattanooga.
A 23-year-old woman had unlocked her side door for her husband who worked late shifts. Nichols found it within minutes. He grabbed a heavy brass candlestick and crept toward her bedroom, striking her twice in the head and then strangling her until she lost consciousness before sexually assaulting her.
When her husband found her shaking in the dark, she was still alive. But the nightmare continued even after police arrived — the phone rang, and she recognized the caller’s voice instantly. It was him.
The line went quiet before officers could trace the call.
Between the fall of 1988 and early 1989, Nichols broke into the homes of at least 11 women. He watched some for days, others for weeks. He came armed with knives and cords, controlling every moment, beating and raping his victims, sometimes forcing them to shower at his command before he fled.
Detectives chased every lead for three months. They interviewed more than a hundred people, ran fingerprint comparisons, and processed biological evidence. The case went nowhere.
They had no suspects and no weapon.
Everything changed on a Thursday night in January 1989. At exactly 8:10 p. m.
, East Ridge Police Captain Larry Holland received an anonymous tip from a man later identified as Chuck Maul. He gave them a name: Harold Wayne Nichols.
Investigators ran his record and found a 1984 conviction for burglary and attempted rape. The pattern fit. They showed his photo to four potential victims, and one by one, each woman pointed to the same face without hesitation.
Police surrounded his house at 11:06 p. m. Nichols was arrested and taken to the East Ridge Station, where he waived his rights without blinking.
Within an hour, the confessions began pouring out on video. By morning, he had admitted to even more attacks — some that had never been reported.
That same evening, more victims identified him in lineups. Finally, he mentioned Karen. On camera, he described breaking into her room, attacking her, and leaving her bleeding on the floor.
He then led investigators to a vacant lot in East Ridge where he had ditched the 2×4 used to crush her skull.
His own wife came forward two days later, saying Nichols had told her everything. By February 1, 1989, the state charged him with Karen Pulley’s rape and murder. More charges followed for nearly every woman he had attacked.
His trial for Karen’s murder began May 7, 1990, in Hamilton County. Jurors were brought in from Sumner County to avoid the heavy local media coverage. Nichols initially tried to block his taped confession from being shown, but the court denied the motion.
Then Nichols gave up the fight. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, aggravated rape, and burglary. The case moved straight to the sentencing phase, where prosecutors sought the death penalty, citing two aggravating factors: the murder occurred during a sexual assault, and Nichols had a history of violent felony convictions.
The jury heard from paramedic William Craig, who described finding Karen’s body so badly broken that he first thought she was a child. Medical examiner Dr. Frank King detailed the multiple skull fractures and the level of force required to inflict them, confirming a 2×4 was the likely weapon.
Dr. King also told the jury that Karen’s sexual assault had been her first experience — a violation made even more brutal by the force involved. The horror of that night was laid bare in clinical and emotional terms.
Then the defense presented a different picture. Joanne, Nichols’ wife, called him kind and gentle. Pastors and friends described a soft-spoken man overtaken by something darker.
One preacher claimed an evil spirit had controlled him.
Nichols himself took the stand and opened a window into his past. He spoke of losing his mother to cancer at age 10, being dropped off at an orphanage by his father without explanation, and being sent back after a failed adoption. He joined the Army, earned an honorable discharge, married, and worked his way up at Godfather’s Pizza.
But then he described nights when something inside him snapped. He called it “a strange energized feeling” — a rush that blocked out everything until violence was the only thing left on his mind. He admitted he never meant to kill Karen and confessed that if he hadn’t been caught, he would have kept going.
Psychologist Dr. Eric Enum diagnosed Nichols with intermittent explosive disorder, describing a boy shaped by loss and sudden disappearances whose rage had turned inward until it erupted. But for the jury, nothing could undo what Nichols had done.
On May 12, 1990, after just two hours of deliberation, the jury returned a death sentence. The verdict cited four reasons: the deliberate, calculated killing, the brutality, his lack of remorse, and the absence of basic respect for human life. The jury was unanimous.
Nichols also received long prison sentences in five separate cases involving four other women — decades that would have kept him locked away for life even without the death penalty. But for 35 years, he battled the execution through appeal after appeal.
His lawyers argued childhood trauma, psychological disorders, and emotional neglect should spare him. Every court that reviewed the case saw the same thing: a man who confessed in detail to a brutal murder and a string of violent rapes. Mercy never came.
Under Tennessee law, inmates convicted before 1999 could choose between the electric chair and lethal injection. Nichols refused to pick. The state defaulted to lethal injection.
In 2020, when his execution was first scheduled, he briefly chose the electric chair — but the pandemic shut everything down before that date ever arrived.
In the years that followed, Nichols built a different life inside prison. His clemency petition portrayed him as a stabilizing force on death row. Correctional officers trusted him in tense situations.
He mentored younger inmates and spoke to at-risk teens during Scared Straight tours.
The petition described a transformation that began the moment the jury sealed his fate. Karen Pulley’s mother, Anne, asked to speak to him right after the verdict. She sat across from him in shackles and offered not anger but faith and forgiveness.
Anne met with him twice more. On one visit, she handed him a Bible. He kept it for 35 years, through every move, every lockdown, every solitary stretch in his 6×9 cell.
His attorney Rosemary Brian watched them cry together and said it felt like Anne was trying to save his soul.
Former correctional Lieutenant Tony Eden called Nichols “one of the warmest and kindest inmates” he had ever supervised. Another former officer, Hugh Rushton, described him as a leader who pushed other men to improve. But none of it was enough.
Days before the execution, Governor Bill Lee denied clemency. After a thorough review of the case, he upheld the sentence of the state of Tennessee.
In an interview ahead of the execution, Karen’s sister said the decades following her murder had been “37 years of hell.” She called Karen gentle, sweet, and innocent, and said she hoped the execution would allow the family to finally focus on good memories rather than the horror.
A surviving victim shared the same sentiment: “The execution was long overdue. I hope he gets everything he has coming.”
For his final meal, Nichols requested beef brisket, coleslaw, a baked potato, onion rings, deviled eggs, and cheese biscuits, all washed down with fruit tea. Tennessee inmates are typically granted $20 for their final meal.
On the morning of December 11, 2025, Nichols was led into the execution chamber. The curtain to the witness room opened at 10:25 a. m.
He lay on the gurney in a yellow prison suit and thick black glasses, his arms stretched out with a sheet pulled neatly to his waist.
His sister sat in the witness room, visibly shaken. His spiritual adviser stood beside him, reading from the Bible, his voice breaking with emotion. Nichols tapped his foot lightly as he listened.
At 10:29 a. m. , he was nodding and blinking slowly.
His breathing deepened and grew heavier as the drugs took effect. His breaths gradually slowed, and his face changed from red to purple as his body became still. The blinds closed.
At 10:39 a. m. , Harold Wayne Nichols was pronounced dead.
He was 64 years old.
For Karen Pulley’s family and the women who survived his attacks, the closing of those blinds marked the end of a nearly four-decade ordeal. A community that once lived in fear of a shadowy intruder who slipped into homes in the dark now knows that shadow will never return.
