Harold Wayne Nichols dies in third Tennessee execution of 2025

Kirsten Fiscus, Evan Mealins and Molly Davis, Nashville Tennessean

Thu, December 11, 2025 at 5:03 PM UTC

6 min read

Tennessee death row inmate Harold Wayne Nichols was executed by lethal injection Dec. 11 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Nichols, 64, was pronounced dead at 10:39 a.m. He was on death row for 35 years.

Nichols was sentenced to death for the brutal beating and rape of 20-year-old Karen Pulley in Chattanooga.

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Nichols' crimes

On Sept. 30, 1988, Nichols parked near Pulley’s Brainerd area home in Chattanooga where she lived with two other women, according to federal court records. Nichols armed himself with a two-by-four piece of lumber, climbed through a bathroom window and found Pulley alone in her bed.

More: Tennessee to execute 'red-headed stranger,' serial rapist of Chattanooga

He struck her in the head before he raped her, court records said. When he was done, he hit her again with the piece of lumber, crushing her skull. She died at the hospital the next day.

In total, during a three-month crime spree spanning from September 1988 to January 1989, Nichols raped or attempted to rape at least 12 women. Pulley was the first known victim of Nichols.

More: Friends describe dread as Harold Wayne Nichols' execution day nears

Upon his arrest, he confessed "primarily to set the record straight because the police had been falsely accusing him of other rapes, assaults and even child molestation, that he had not committed," court records said.

On the day of his murder trial, Nichols pleaded guilty.

Karen Pulley, 20, was beaten and raped in her Chattanooga area home Sept. 30, 1988, before she died the next day as a result of her injuries.

For all his crimes, Nichols was sentenced to the maximum punishment allowed for each charge — more than 200 years for 12 rapes, attempted rape and burglary charges and death for the murder charge.

Nichols provided little explanation for his actions, but admitted in testimony that if he were to remain free he'd have continued assaulting women. During the sentencing phase for the murder trial, testimony revealed a history of sudden abandonment, when both his mother and grandmother died, and abuse by his father. Several psychologists concluded he had intermittent explosive disorder, characterized by repeated, sudden bouts of impulsive, aggressive, violent behavior or angry verbal outbursts.

“It appears that there was an increasing anger or rage building within Mr. Nichols which was never adequately tempered, modified or depleted. As a consequence, he appears to be an individual who on the surface is placid, passive, ineffectual, and non-threatening. Yet, underneath the surface there are raging tensions, anger, and hostilities which periodically exploded into the aforementioned violent acts,” clinical psychologist Eric Engum wrote in his report.

Pulley's sister, Lisette Monroe, in an interview prior to Nichols' execution, said she believed Nichols' execution would provide closure and healing.

“She was a young, innocent, good Christian woman,” Monroe said. “A young girl who never hurt anyone. He definitely needs to be put to death.”

Harold Wayne Nichols' appeals process

Harold Nichols is on death row after pleading guilty to the rape and murder of college student Karen Pulley in Chattanooga in 1988. The state prosecuted and convicted him for 12 other rapes.

His case went through the appeals process for decades.

Attorneys for Nichols argued his trial attorneys were ineffective in various ways and that the order of the trials was prejudicial. Despite Pulley being Nichols' first known victim, he went to trial or pleaded guilty to the other crimes first. Those convictions then enhanced his criminal status allowing the state to seek the strictest punishment for the murder case — a death sentence.

"The facts of this case make it one of the more tragic and disturbing cases that I have heard in years," Judge Boyce Martin Jr. wrote in concurrence of a federal appeals court ruling affirming the trial court's verdicts. "While Nichols' actions are despicable, I cannot ignore the fact that his actions were committed in the late 1980s and that he was convicted in 1990."

Nichols was supposed to be executed in 1994, before his appeals delayed that, Martin's statement said.

"I have been on this bench since 1979, and for 23 of my 34 years as a judge on this Court this case has been moving through our justice system, consuming countless judicial hours, money, legal resources, and providing no closure for the families of the victims," Martin wrote.

Nichols also challenged Tennessee's new lethal injection protocol in court in 2025, but judges dismissed his lawsuit.

He sought clemency from Gov. Bill Lee based on the testimony of friends, lawyers, jurors and former prosecutors.

Six jurors on his murder trial said in sworn statements they would not again sentence Nichols to death. Several said they chose the death penalty to ensure Nichols would not be released from prison but did not believe he would be executed. When Nichols was sentenced in 1990, Tennessee had not executed anyone in 30 years. All life sentences at that time carried the possibility of parole, and jurors said they feared Nichols being released.

The district attorney's office in Hamilton County in 2017 reached an agreement with Nichols' attorneys to change his sentence to life in prison. Judge Don Ash refused to let the agreement take effect.

Many who knew Nichols asked the governor for clemency because he had changed so much as a person since he committed the crimes. He had shown remorse and rehabilitation, which Nichols largely credited to Pulley's mother forgiving him for his crimes after his sentencing. In a 2025 apology letter, he wrote to Pulley: "Your life was cut short by me. I am accountable to you.”

Protesters hold vigil outside prison, online

Abe Bonowitz, co-founder of Death Penalty Action, speaks to protesters after reading a message from death row inmate Harold Wayne Nichols, scheduled for execution Dec. 11, outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, on Dec. 7, 2025.

Just under 30 people against the death penalty were gathered in the fenced-off area outside of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution at 9:30 a.m. There was one man, Rick Laude, in the fenced-off area reserved for people in favor of the death penalty.

David Bass was in the anti-death penalty group. He said he's not an activist but felt compelled to attend the protest, to be as close as physically possible to the people inside the prison. He's gotten to know several of them over the 200 visits he has made to death row.

"I think some people view this as a protest, and that's fine," Bass said. "I'm certainly against the death penalty. But then there are others who view it as a vigil. We're here to be in community."

Three people incarcerated in Riverbend called into the vigil through Bass' phone. Terry King, who is on death row, said that proximity to death row inmates changes people's minds about the death penalty. That's what happened to Bass, whose friend initially got him involved with visiting the prison.

Many at the protest Dec. 11 had been to one before. But it was the first time for Vanderbilt University Divinity School graduate student Brennan Perkins, 23.

Perkins was moved by a separate vigil for Nichols on Dec. 9, and that motivated him to show up the morning of Nichols' execution.

"There was something special about that evening specifically," he said about the Dec. 9 vigil.

Tennessee faith voices mourned the death of Nichols during a virtual vigil that began at 10 a.m., when the execution was scheduled to begin. Rachel Kiesel Ryan, who works with Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, described Nichols as “a human being capable of growth, capable of repentance."

Tennessee's three Catholic bishops and the state's Episcopal bishops issued a separate statement in November calling for an end to the death penalty.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee executes death row inmate Harold Wayne Nichols

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