Harold Wayne Nichols, a Tennessee death row inmate, was executed nearly three decades after he raped and murdered a college student named Karen Pulley. Nichols used his last words to apologize to the people he harmed before he was administered a lethal injection of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Thursday. He expressed readiness to go home and said, “To the people I’ve harmed, I’m sorry. To my family, know that I love you.”
Nichols, aged 64, had been on death row since 1990, following his conviction for the brutal killing of 20-year-old Karen Pulley. Pulley was at her Chattanooga home on September 30, 1988, when Nichols broke in through a window, assaulted her with a two-by-four, raped her, and fled. She tragically passed away in the hospital the next day. Nichols confessed to raping and murdering Pulley and admitted to similar crimes against other women in the Chattanooga area during a three-month crime spree.
At trial, Nichols expressed remorse for his actions but acknowledged that he would have continued his violent behavior if he had not been apprehended. He received multiple life sentences for rape and burglary charges, along with the death penalty for Pulley’s murder. His execution was delayed twice, once due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and again in 2022 after a procedural error led to a statewide suspension of executions by Governor Bill Lee.
Pulley’s sister, Lisette Monroe, revealed that her family had endured “37 years of hell” waiting for Nichols’ sentence to be carried out. She described the impact of her sister’s murder on her family, noting that her parents were never the same after the tragic event. Monroe hopes that Nichols’ execution will bring some measure of peace to her family and allow them to focus on the happy memories of Karen, whom she described as “gentle, sweet, and innocent.”
Nichols is the third inmate to be executed this year under Tennessee’s new lethal injection protocol, which now uses a single drug, pentobarbital, instead of a three-drug combination. His execution marks the culmination of a long and painful chapter for Pulley’s family, who have been waiting for justice for nearly four decades.
