A former North Carolina middle school teacher convicted of repeatedly raping a 15-year-old girl has been killed inside a state prison, and a convicted murderer serving time at the same facility has been charged in his death, authorities said. Ernest Nichols, 60, was found unresponsive in a dormitory at Greene Correctional Institution in Maury at 6:49 a.m. on Sunday; staff initiated emergency life-saving measures and summoned EMS, which pronounced him dead at 7:22 a.m. The North Carolina Department of Adult Correction (DAC) said the death is being investigated as a homicide, and the prison was placed on a temporary lockdown as investigators secured the scene and interviewed witnesses.
On Tuesday, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation announced that Greene County Sheriff’s Deputies had served a murder warrant on inmate Wilbert Baldwin, 41, in connection with Nichols’s death. Baldwin, who was previously convicted of second-degree murder in Richmond County in 2010, was given no bond following service of the warrant and remained in DAC custody. The SBI said it is leading the inquiry at the request of the sheriff, with DAC cooperating. No additional details about motive, weapon, or the precise location within the dorm were immediately released.
Nichols had been incarcerated since 2011 after pleading guilty in Mecklenburg County to statutory rape. At the time of Sunday’s killing, his projected release date was September 2027. DAC’s preliminary public statement identified him by name and age, confirmed the time he was discovered, and noted the lockdown of the minimum-custody facility while the homicide investigation proceeded. A DAC spokesperson also said Greene houses offenders in dormitory-style units rather than individual cells, underscoring that Nichols was found in a shared housing area rather than a single-occupancy lockup.
The prison complex in Maury includes Greene Correctional Institution, a male minimum-custody facility with dormitory housing and reentry programming, and two nearby facilities that hold higher-custody populations. Greene is designated for reentry preparation and also provides medical support beds for chronic care, according to state materials describing the site’s mission and layout. Job postings and administrative documents list Greene’s minimum-custody capacity at roughly 650 inmates, with offenders typically living in open-bay dorms.
Authorities said Nichols’s death was initially treated as suspicious and quickly classified as a homicide as investigators gathered accounts inside the dorm. Local broadcast outlets reported the victim was found on the floor beside his bunk shortly before 7 a.m., a timeline DAC later publicly affirmed. The SBI said Baldwin was served with the murder warrant two days after the death, and remained in state custody without bond. Officials have not said whether additional arrests are possible. An autopsy is pending.
The inmate now accused of killing Nichols has been in state custody for a prior homicide. State and local reports identify Baldwin as the subject of a 2010 second-degree murder conviction out of Richmond County. He has been serving that sentence at Greene and, following service of the new warrant, was returned to the prison system to await further proceedings. The SBI’s public notice about the arrest emphasized that the homicide investigation remains active.
Nichols’s underlying case drew widespread attention in the Charlotte area more than a decade ago. A district attorney’s news release from August 5, 2011, states that he pleaded guilty to statutory rape and received a sentence of 216 to 269 months—18 to 22 years—in the North Carolina Department of Correction. The DA’s office said Nichols, then a physical education instructor at Ranson Middle School, had been arrested in October 2009 after a 16-year-old reported she had been raped by him when she was 15. Prosecutors said the defendant had videotaped crimes involving the victim and, after the teenager disclosed the abuse to her mother, “drove down Highway 73 and threw the video recordings into the woods,” where officers later recovered the evidence.
Contemporaneous reporting in 2009–2011 described a series of charges and disturbing details. A search warrant unsealed at the time stated that Nichols impersonated his own teenage son on Facebook to communicate with the girl and pressed her for sexualized messages, including asking her to “text message [him] whenever she entered the shower.” Investigators said the abuse occurred over about six months in 2008 at Nichols’s Huntersville home and that the victim was not a student at Ranson. In court appearances before his plea, he disrupted proceedings and told a judge, “I’m not a straw man,” refusing to enter a plea and requiring the court to proceed without his cooperation; a judge had earlier rejected a proposed plea agreement as insufficiently tough, local coverage noted. After the victim’s mother confronted him, a warrant summary recorded that Nichols called himself a “pig.” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools said at the time he was suspended and barred from school grounds pending the outcome of the criminal case.
DAC’s summary of Nichols’s incarceration lists his conviction county and the projected release date, aligning with the 18–22 year sentence range imposed in 2011. Public documents indicate Nichols had been in custody since that year, moving through facilities as the department adjusted placements and program assignments. Greene Correctional’s role as a minimum-custody, dormitory-style institution meant Nichols was housed in an open setting, rather than a single cell, when the fatal attack occurred.
The Greene County Sheriff’s Office and the SBI have not publicly described the method of killing or whether any improvised weapon was recovered. Authorities also have not said if the incident was captured by surveillance cameras within the dorm or if either man had conflicts before Sunday. In announcing the murder warrant, the SBI said only that Baldwin was served and returned to DAC custody, receiving no bond; charging decisions and scheduling will proceed through Greene County’s courts while the investigation continues, officials said.
Greene Correctional, situated in eastern North Carolina, houses inmates nearing reentry and those in minimum custody and also supports chronic medical needs within the system. State material emphasizes work assignments and programming typical of minimum-custody settings. After Nichols’s death, the facility imposed a temporary lockdown—standard in a prison homicide—while investigators processed the area and interviewed inmates and staff. DAC said it is cooperating fully with the SBI and local authorities in the inquiry.
The 2011 district attorney’s release summarized the prosecution’s evidence and the steps that led to Nichols’s guilty plea. It said officers retrieved recordings the defendant had tried to discard following a confrontation with the victim’s mother, adding a physical-evidence dimension to a case that already included digital communications. The plea ended a turbulent pretrial period marked by Nichols’s outbursts in court and shifting negotiations over punishment. The resulting 216–269 month prison term put his earliest projected release in 2027 if he earned appropriate credits.
The SBI’s public notice about Baldwin pointed to a prior second-degree murder conviction in Richmond County dating to 2010. Local stations that reported on this week’s events said he is serving a roughly 20-year sentence for that earlier killing and is now accused of a prison murder while in minimum-custody housing. He was served with the warrant, given no bond and remained within the state system pending further legal action, according to those reports. Authorities did not indicate whether Baldwin has obtained counsel in the new case.
Officials have not released identifying information about any witnesses who may have been present in the dorm when the attack occurred. In minimum-custody dormitories, offenders typically sleep in open bays with double bunks and have access to common areas, an arrangement that can leave many inmates within sight of an incident. Investigators commonly rely on a combination of witness statements, security footage and physical evidence recovered from the scene to establish probable cause in prison homicides, a process that in this case produced a warrant within roughly 48 hours.
Nichols worked at Ranson Middle School in Charlotte for about 14 years before his 2009 arrest, according to local reports from that period. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools said he was suspended and barred from campus after the allegations surfaced. The victim in the underlying case was identified in case documents as a 15-year-old who had been the girlfriend of one of Nichols’s children; investigators said the abuse occurred at the family home and not at the school. The district attorney’s 2011 statement said the Huntersville Police Department retrieved video evidence after Nichols attempted to discard it, aiding the prosecution that led to his guilty plea and long sentence.
The homicide at Greene Correctional is the latest violent incident to put a spotlight on safety within open-bay units where minimum-custody inmates live in close quarters. While DAC did not immediately announce operational changes at Greene in response to the killing, the temporary lockdown and the SBI-led investigation indicate the standard protocol is in place. As of Tuesday evening, DAC and the SBI had not released a narrative of the minutes leading up to the fatal assault, and it was not clear whether staff arrived during or after the attack described in the warrant.
In the Charlotte case that sent Nichols to prison, court records and local reporting documented his resistance to court procedure and the rejection of an earlier plea offer. A judge ultimately accepted the 2011 guilty plea and imposed the 18–22 year term, which put Nichols at Greene in the final stretch of his sentence. DAC lists Greene as a setting for reentry preparation, with programming intended to help inmates transition to communities. The killing has interrupted that regimen for an unknown number of dorm residents while investigators work through interviews and review evidence.
Authorities said further updates will follow the autopsy and additional investigative steps. For now, the official record establishes that Nichols—a former Charlotte educator convicted of statutory rape in 2011—was discovered unresponsive in a minimum-custody dorm shortly before 7 a.m. Sunday; that the prison instituted a lockdown; that the State Bureau of Investigation and Greene County Sheriff’s Office led the inquiry; and that inmate Wilbert Baldwin, a convicted murderer, was served with a warrant charging him with Nichols’s killing and held without bond. Additional details, including any account of motive or whether others may have been involved, remain under investigation.