JUST IN: Tennessee Executes U.S. Army Vet Harold Wayne Nichols — “I Know Where I’m Going”…
Tennessee carried out the death penalty this morning, executing serial rapist and murderer Harold Nichols.
“Nichols was sentenced to death after confessing to the 1988 rape and murder of 20-year-old Karen Pulley in Chattanooga.” “She was asleep. He was already inside and he was holding a board.”
When investigators finally asked him one question, “Would he have stopped on his own?” He didn’t hesitate. You said, “No.”
This is not a story pulled from a crime novel. This is not a fictional thriller. What you are about to hear is a real case, a real woman, a real crime, and a legal battle that took 37 years to reach its conclusion.
Karen Elise Pulley was 20 years old. She was not a headline. She was not a case number. She was a young woman with a plan for her life and every reason to believe it was just getting started. Karen was a student at Chattanooga State Community College, working toward a career as a paralegal. Before college, she had walked the halls of Brainerd Baptist High School, the same Brainerd community where she later made her home as a cheerleader.
She had recently completed Bible College, and her faith was not background noise in her life. It was central to everything she did and everyone she was. Those who knew her used the same words every time: bubbly, selfless, happy. Her sister Lisette described her as someone with a genuine mischievous streak, the kind of person who made every room feel lighter.
Lisette Monroe was 23 in 1988 and had just returned to the United States after 3 years living on a US Air Force base in the Philippines with her husband Jeff Monroe. The sisters had been inseparable their entire lives. Every Sunday after church, without fail, they would go to dinner together, just the two of them. Lisette had planned a trip to Chattanooga. She wanted Karen to meet her newborn daughter for the first time. That visit never happened.
Karen’s parents, Ann and Chuck Pulley, spent the rest of their lives carrying the weight of that September night. Both passed away in the years that followed, never living to see the day justice was finally delivered.
At the time of her death, Karen shared a Brainerd apartment with two roommates. She had a future mapped out. She had people who loved her deeply. And on the night of September 30th, 1988, none of that was enough to protect her.
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The Background of Harold Wayne Nichols
To understand what happened to Karen Pulley, you first have to understand the man responsible. Not just what he did, but where he came from and how a person becomes capable of it.
Harold Wayne Nichols was born on December 31st, 1960 in Cleveland, Tennessee. From his very first years, the environment around him was unstable. His father, Mac Nichols, was later described in federal court records as a mean, abusive, and outright vile man. His mother, Nanny Lou, struggled with mental instability. The family home was cramped and isolating. Harold, his older sister Deborah, his parents, and his paternal grandmother, all sharing the same tight space. Mac was a strict member of the Church of God of Prophecy and allowed no outside visitors except fellow churchgoers.
In June 1961, Mac’s sister Betty Sampley and her husband drowned during a family outing. Two of their six children, Royce and Diana, ages 13 and 12, were taken into the Nichols household. For years that followed, Mac subjected Diana to sexual menace and possible assault. It was the kind of household where harm was normalized and silence was enforced.
In October 1966, Nanny Lou was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died on January 29th, 1971. Harold was 10 years old.
What came after was worse. With his mother gone, Mac’s abuse of Harold and Deborah intensified. Less than 7 months after Nanny Lou’s death, the situation became so severe that church leaders were forced to step in. On August 12th, 1971, they brokered a deal. Harold and Deborah would be removed from Mac’s custody. In exchange, the abuse would be covered up and Mac would never face criminal charges.
The two children were placed in the Tomlinson Children’s Home, a church-run orphanage that federal court records later described as stereotypically harsh and inhospitable. Mac never visited them once during their entire time there.
On June 28th, 1977, Harold, now 17, was returned to live with Mac. His father was by then collecting disability benefits, drinking heavily, and largely absent in any meaningful sense. Mac was still verbally and physically abusive. There was one incident where he propositioned Harold directly. Harold declined and walked away.
Back in high school, Harold began skipping classes regularly. He started roaming the streets at night, sometimes not coming home at all. That pattern—quiet nighttime wandering through neighborhoods with no clear destination—would follow him for the rest of his life.
He graduated in August 1979 and spent the next two years struggling to hold down steady work. In November 1981, he enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. While there, he became involved with a woman who was already married to another soldier. They had a daughter together in November 1983.
That same month, Nichols was discharged from the army for poor performance. He left the woman, left his daughter, and returned to Chattanooga in early 1984.
The Escalation of Crimes
Within months of his return, on August 30th, 1984, Nichols broke into an apartment shared by two women. He later claimed he had only intended to steal. What followed was an attempted sexual assault. The victim managed to escape.
Nichols was arrested on September 4th, 1984, and pleaded guilty in December of that year. He received a 5-year sentence and was sent to Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. He served 18 months. Upon his release, a psychological evaluation was conducted. The finding: “nothing unusual.” That conclusion, made by a professional, recorded in official documents, and used to justify his freedom, would later prove to be one of the most consequential errors connected to this entire case.
After his release, Nichols missed a parole appointment on July 9th, 1986. His parole officer filed a violation. He was returned to jail from September through October 1986, then released again and ordered to live with his father until he married his then-girlfriend, Joanne.
Harold and Joanne married on November 1st, 1986. She worked at Sather’s Candy. He took a job at a local Godfather’s Pizza. By all accounts, the marriage was warm and functional. Joanne later said she was completely devoted to him and had no reason to suspect anything was wrong, but cracks were forming beneath the surface.
In April 1987, Joanne underwent surgery for a blocked fallopian tube. Two months later, in June 1987, the woman in Kansas, the mother of the daughter Harold had abandoned, filed a paternity suit. Nichols settled out of court and paid child support.
Then, on June 29th, 1987, at 11:45 in the evening, a woman living in East Ridge spotted a man in a white t-shirt lurking near her home and called the police. When officers arrived, they found Harold Wayne Nichols leaving a wooded area approximately 300 feet from the woman’s house. He was carrying a knife. He could not explain why he was there. He was arrested for prowling and carrying a dangerous weapon.
On July 29th, 1987, he was returned to county jail, this time for a full year. He was released approximately July to August of 1988. Weeks later, Karen Pulley was dead.
The Night of September 30th, 1988
What happened on the night of September 30th, 1988, did not begin that night. The night before, September 29th, Harold Wayne Nichols was already outside Karen Pulley’s Brainerd apartment. Through a small crack in the window blinds, he watched her roommate Lori getting ready for her night shift. He stayed on the property and watched until Lori left. Then he walked away.
He came back the following night. On September 30th, 1988, Nichols parked near the apartment and waited outside. He watched the house. He confirmed that Karen was alone. Then he moved. He entered through a bathroom window.
Once inside, he located a length of 2×4 lumber within the home. He carried it with him as he moved through the house and up the stairs toward Karen’s bedroom. Karen was asleep. What followed was a sudden and violent attack. Court records confirmed that Karen fought back. The official cause of death, as determined by autopsy, was blunt force trauma to the head, resulting in skull fractures and severe brain injuries. After the attack, Nichols left the scene and disposed of the weapon.
The following morning, Karen’s roommate, Susan Saunders Massie, came home and found her. Karen was alive but unconscious, lying on the floor of her bedroom. Emergency services were called immediately. The responding EMT was a veteran of combat in Vietnam. He 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. She died later that same day. She was 20 years old.
The Red-Headed Stranger and the Arrest
Karen Pulley’s death on October 1st, 1988 did not mark the end of Harold Wayne Nichols’s actions. It marked the beginning of a 95-day pattern that would eventually stretch across multiple neighborhoods and jurisdictions throughout the Chattanooga area.
From September 30th, 1988 through January 3rd, 1989, Nichols targeted at least 12 women. 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.”
On the night of January 2nd, 1989, Nichols told his wife Joanne he was going out to get hamburgers. He did not return home until 7:00 the following morning. During those hours, he carried out multiple attacks across the city. Three days later, everything changed.
At 8:10 p.m. 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 Maul, a man whose personal jealousy over Nichols’s 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. Officers moved quickly. Nichols was arrested on January 5th, 1989. That same evening, investigators began showing photo lineups to victims. At 5:20 p.m., one victim identified Nichols. An hour later, a second made a positive identification. Two more followed shortly after.
By 8:00 p.m., Nichols was transported to Chattanooga Police Department headquarters. Detective Richard Hec conducted the videotaped interview. During that session, Nichols confessed to the attack on Karen Pulley. He described the layout of her home and bedroom in detail. He identified his entry point. He laid out the facts of what happened that night. He disclosed where he had disposed of the weapon afterward. Courts would later describe that videotape as the only direct link between Nichols and the Pulley case.
The physical evidence, however, presented complications. Forensic entomologist Dr. Neil Haskell testified that the recovered 2×4—located leaning against a tree identified by roommate Susan Saunders Massie as consistent with a board that had been stored in the home—showed no blood or fiber evidence. The time elapsed between September 1988 and its January 1989 recovery had compromised that line of evidence.
A Tennessee Bureau of Investigation serology report from 1989 initially appeared to exclude Nichols as the contributor of biological material found at the scene. That finding was later challenged by expert testimony explaining how significant blood loss and transfusions can affect serological test results. The forensic picture would not be fully resolved for more than 16 years. In October 2005, DNA testing definitively confirmed Nichols’s biological connection to the Pulley case. His defense team subsequently withdrew any remaining claim of innocence on the murder count.
The Trial and Sentencing
At trial, medical examiner Dr. Frank King testified about Karen’s injuries, the evidence of her physical resistance, and the nature and cause of her death. He authenticated the autopsy report, crime scene diagrams, and photographs for the court record. Hamilton County Court Clerk Harold Rowan then formally introduced the records of Nichols’s five prior convictions for aggravated offenses—documents that would become central to the prosecution’s case at sentencing.
Nichols was formally indicted on February 1st, 1989. A mental health evaluation in July 1989 found him competent to stand trial. On January 6th, 1989, the day after his arrest, Nichols also told his wife Joanne what he had done. She had no prior knowledge of any of it.
The trial of Harold Wayne Nichols opened on May 7th, 1990 in Hamilton County Criminal Court. Because of the significant public attention surrounding the case, the court granted a change of venue for jury selection only. Jurors were brought in from Sevier County. The trial itself remained in Hamilton County.
Defense attorneys Hugh J. Moore Jr. and Rosemary Bryan moved immediately to suppress the videotaped confession, the single most damaging piece of evidence against their client. The court denied the motion. With that ruling, the tape was going before the jury. Regardless, Nichols changed course. He entered guilty pleas to first-degree felony murder, aggravated rape, and first-degree burglary. The case moved directly into the sentencing phase.
The question before the jury was straightforward: Life or death? District Attorney Steve Beville led the prosecution. He 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. Hamilton County Court Clerk Harold Rowan formally introduced the conviction records into evidence.
The defense called several witnesses. Joanne Nichols testified about her husband’s character and described their marriage as genuinely happy. Larry Kilgore, Nichols’s closest friend, told the court he was the best person he had ever known. Three reverends also testified. Reverend Butler stated that Nichols had been operating under the influence of an evil spirit, though on cross-examination, he acknowledged Nichols had never once sought help for this. Reverend Gonia described Nichols as a good child who remained a good person. Reverend Hawkins had known Nichols personally at the Tomlinson Children’s Home and had visited him in jail after his arrest. He told the court the man he saw behind bars reminded him of the young boy he had once known.
Nichols took the stand himself. He told 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. He insisted he had not intended for Karen Pulley to die. Then he addressed her family directly. He said, “I wish that there was something I could do to change the things that happened. I know Miss Pulley’s family is hurting, and I’m not asking them for forgiveness. I don’t expect that, but if I could change places with Karen, I would.”
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 Beville 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 2 hours, the jury returned a verdict of death. The judge followed the jury’s recommendation. In addition to the death sentence, Nichols received 60 years for aggravated rape and 15 years for burglary in the Pulley case, along with an aggregate of 225 years across his remaining convictions. Years later, six of the jurors stated publicly that when they voted for death, they did so believing Tennessee would never actually carry out the sentence.
Forgiveness and the Final Decades
What happened immediately after the verdict was something no one in that courtroom anticipated. Karen Pulley’s mother, Ann Pulley, stood up. She 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 had 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 State v. Nichols. In January 1995, the US Supreme Court declined to review the case. That same year, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals upheld his remaining convictions. The appeals continued.
In May 2003, Nichols filed a federal habeas corpus petition. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with intermittent explosive disorder, notably a condition that a doctor had also identified during the original murder trial. In December 2007, he was re-sentenced on his non-capital offenses, receiving 25-year minimum terms on each count, running concurrently.
While those legal proceedings moved through the courts, Nichols was living out his sentence at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. He worked maintenance on Unit 2, handling plumbing and electrical repairs on death row. People who encountered him during those years consistently described a man who appeared genuinely remorseful and changed from who he had been in 1988.
That perception was not limited to those inside the prison. 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 re-sentenced 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. 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. Executions were paused. A new single-drug pentobarbital protocol was approved in December 2024. In March 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court set a new date: December 11th, 2025.
On December 9th, Governor Lee formally denied clemency. It was the seventh execution he had allowed since taking office. The US Supreme Court declined to issue a stay. Every door had closed.
The Execution
And then, Chuck and Ann 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 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee. Nichols woke before dawn. 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.
Outside the prison, anti-death penalty protesters gathered. One who worked in faith-based prison ministry at Riverbend said he had personally met Nichols and believed rehabilitation was the right response.
Inside the chamber, spiritual adviser J.R. Davis stood beside Nichols. Together, they recited the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer. Both men’s voices became strained at points. After the final amen, Davis continued speaking quietly. Nichols nodded. Officials asked for his final words. He said, “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.”
Pentobarbital was administered. Harold Wayne Nichols was pronounced dead at 10:39 a.m. The 10th execution in Tennessee since the state resumed that process in 2018.
While it happened, the Pulley family held a celebration of Karen’s life at home. Lisette Monroe could not attend. Her husband Jeff Monroe addressed the press, thanking Detective Richard Hec, 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 said he believed Nichols’s 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—that is for you to decide.
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