Nationwide — 60-year-old Ernest Nichols, a former gym teacher from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, who was convicted of repeatedly raping a student back in 2011, has been murdered in prison by another inmate. The Department of Adult Correction says his was discovered on the floor beside his bunk in a dormitory in the Greene Correctional Institution just before 7am.
Nicols was scheduled to be released from prison in September of 2027.
According to Local News 12, two days after the murder, the Green County Sheriff’s Office charged fellow inmate Wilbert Baldwin with murder in connection with Nichols’ death. Baldwin is serving a sentence for a second-degree murder that he was convicted for back in 2010.
Nichols had been convicted of statutory rape in 2011 for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl multiple times in a 6-month-long span. He also had been accused of watching the girl have consensual sex with another boy.
He was also accused of creating fake Facebook account using his teenage son’s identity to send messages to the victim, asking her to make up sexually explicit stories and to text him when she entered the shower.
There has been no official comment yet from his family.