Tennessee | Serial rapist dubbed 'the red-headed stranger' to be executed Thursday

By day, Harold Wayne Nichols appeared to be a loving husband who was adored by his wife. By night, he was a serial predator who attacked women at their most vulnerable and raped them.

Tennessee is set to execute a serial rapist, dubbed the "red-headed stranger," for the brutal murder of one of his victims, a promising young college student attacked in her bed.

Harold Wayne Nichols, 64, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday, Dec. 11, for the 1988 rape and murder of 20-year-old Karen Pulley, who was bludgeoned, raped, and left for dead.

Nichols was living a double life in Chattanooga at the time of his capture. By all appearances, he was a loving husband whose wife adored and doted on him by day. By night, he was a serial predator who ruthlessly attacked women at their most vulnerable, including on his own wedding anniversary.

Nichols confessed to his crimes, saying that he got a "strange energized feeling" when he attacked women, according to an archived Associated Press story.

One of his surviving victims says the execution is a long time coming − almost 40 years after his crimes terrorized a community, devastated Pulley's family and left at least a dozen women traumatized for life.

She told The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network: "I hope he gets everything he has coming." The Tennessean did not name her because she is the victim of a sexual crime.

Harold Wayne Nichols is set to be executed at 10 a.m. ET on Thursday, Dec. 11, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

It will be the third execution in the state this year and the 46th in the U.S., a number not reached since 2010. Death penalty experts attribute the uptick to the political climate under pro-death penalty President Donald Trump and a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

On Sept. 30, 1988, 20-year-old Karen Pulley was in bed when Nichols climbed through a bathroom window and attacked her with a 2-by-4-inch piece of wood, hitting her over the head and then raping her.

"Afterwards, Nichols hit her in the head several more times with the 2-by-4, crushing her skull, and left her on the floor, bleeding and unconscious," a federal appeal opinion said.

Pulley's roommate found her the next morning lying in a pool of blood but still alive. She died later that day at a nearby hospital.

It was the first of at least a dozen attacks attributed to Nichols in Chattanooga between September 1988 to the beginning of 1989. Police say Nichols targeted and stalked women who were single or simply home alone.

About a month after Pulley's murder, Nichols struck again, attacking a 23-year-old woman who had left a door unlocked for her husband at night. Nichols came in, hit her over the head with a candlestick and raped her.

On Nov. 1, 1988, which was his second wedding anniversary with his wife, Nichols attacked another woman, raping her at knife point after forcing her to wear an outfit he had picked out.

On Jan. 3, 1989, he raped three separate women − including two single mothers whose children he threatened − and tried to rape a fourth woman, all within four hours of each other, court records say.

Prosecutors indicted Nichols on charges of murder, rape, burglary and assault. He was sentenced to death for killing Pulley and 200 years for his other crimes.

Nichols' wife said that she was "smitten" with her husband up until his arrest, according to court records.

She said that Nichols, an assistant manager at Godfather's Pizza, began staying out all night during the summer of 1988 and that she suspected an affair.

When police questioned her, she at first said that Nichols couldn't have committed a rape on their anniversary because they had been together. "But later she realized that he had left in the middle of the night," according to a federal appeal opinion.

Court records show that Nichols gave his wife varying excuses for his absences, including once telling her he was leaving to go get hamburgers.

His wife testified for the defense and said that Nichols eventually confessed his crimes to her. He admitted to her he was dangerous and "should not be out on the streets," according to a court record.

Nichols testified that he knew the rapes were wrong, but he felt compelled. "On cross-examination," a federal judge wrote, Nichols "conceded that if he had not been arrested, he would have continued prowling at night and raping women."

Karen Pulley's older sister, Lisette Monroe, told The Tennessean that the last 37 years have been filed with grief for her, Pulley's last living immediate relative. The girls' father died in February 1995 and their mother died on Christmas Day in 2012.

Monroe was 23 and living in Colorado with her husband, Jeff, when her sister was murdered. The couple was planning a trip to Chattanooga so they could introduce their 18-month-old daughter to her aunt.

“She was a young, innocent, good Christian woman,” Monroe said. “A young girl who never hurt anyone."

Monroe recalls how as girls, the sisters would have fights over makeup or a hairbrush but that they were always close. As adults they traded dozens of handwritten letters while as Monroe and Jeff were stationed in the Philippines in the Air Force. Pulley would discuss a boy she was dating or the beginning stages of her paralegal studies at Chattanooga State Community College.

If she could write one more letter to her sister, she said she'd start with "I love you."

"And I miss you more than I know how to express" she continued. "I wish that you had been here to see your nieces grow up and what beautiful, strong women they’ve become, in her footsteps."

The process to bring Nichols to justice has been slow with a slew of appeals over the decades, Monroe said, adding that the execution will help heal a deep wound.

“We’ve been trying to heal for 37 years, and there is no healing. There is no moving past it ever," said Monroe, who now lives in Washington. “The interruptions to our lives, the revictimizing every single time it comes up, that will stop and there will be healing in that aspect."

Then, she said, the family can "focus on our memories of Karen and the love that we have for her."

Source: USA Today, Kirsten Fiscus, Amanda Lee Myers, December 10, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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