Harold Wayne Nichols, 64, was sentenced to death after being convicted for the 1988 rape and murder of Karen Pulley in Chattanooga.

Thursday morning, Harold Wayne Nichols was the third man to be executed in Tennessee in 2025. Nichols pleaded guilty to raping and killing a 20-year-old woman named Karen Pulley in 1988.

Death row killer Harold Wayne Nichols, 64, is set to be executed by lethal injection for his brutal 1988 crimes after having two previous execution dates postponed

Harold Wayne Nichols suffered an abusive childhood before he grew up to be known as the "red-headed stranger," a serial rapist and convicted killer.

A man sentenced to die for his conviction in a 1988 murder has selected his final meal, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.

Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California.