Overview

• Nichols, 60, was found unresponsive in his Greene Correctional Institution cell in Maury around 6:50 a.m. Sunday and was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later.
• The state prison was placed on lockdown as authorities opened a homicide investigation into his death.
• By Tuesday, the Greene County Sheriff’s Office served a murder warrant on inmate Wilbert Baldwin, who is incarcerated for a prior second-degree murder conviction.
• Nichols was serving a 15-year sentence after a 2011 statutory rape conviction involving repeated assaults of a 15-year-old in 2008, with his release set for September 2027.
• Records detail that he posed online as his son to contact the teen, police seized videotapes and sex items from his home in 2009, and he disrupted court proceedings by refusing to enter a plea.