Tennessee executed Harold Wayne Nichols by lethal injection Thursday in Nashville for the 1988 rape and murder of Karen Pulley, a 20-year-old student at Chattanooga State University.

Nichols, 64, had confessed to killing Pulley as well as raping several other women in the Chattanooga area. Although he expressed remorse at trial, he admitted he would have continued his violent behavior had he not been arrested. He was sentenced to death in 1990.

"I'd just get these feelings and I'd do it. I can't describe it or understand it," Nichols said during his trial, according to archived video from CBS affiliate WDEF . As the station reported, Nichols tearfully told the jury: "If I could trade places with Karen Pulley, I would."

"To the people I harmed, I'm sorry," Nichols said in his fina

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