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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. Karen Pulley’s death on October 1st, 1988 did not mark the end of Harold Wayne Nichols’ 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 Mall, a man whose personal jealousy over Nichols’ 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 Hack conducted [clears throat] the videotaped interview. During that session, Nichols confessed to the attack on Karen Polley. 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 Polley case. The physical evidence, however, presented complications. Forensic entomologist Dr. Neil Haskell testified that the recovered 2 by 4, located leaning against a tree, identified by roommate Susan Saunders massive is 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’ biological connection to the Puryear case. His defense team subsequently withdrew any remaining claim of innocence on the murder count. 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’ five prior convictions for aggravated offenses, documents that would become central to the prosecution’s case at sentencing.