Reagan Simmons-Hancock trusted Taylor Parker completely. Parker was her friend, wedding photographer and a fellow expectant mom. What Simmons-Hancock believed was a genuine friendship was actually a carefully crafted deception — one that would ultimately end in her murder.
In 2022, Parker was convicted of capital murder for the 2020 killing of Simmons-Hancock, 21, and the abduction of her unborn daughter, who was cut from her mother’s womb and later died. The Texas woman is now the subject of the Netflix true-crime documentary “Maternal Instinct,” directed by Jessica Dimmock and executive produced by Liz Garbus.
“What Taylor did is a type of cold-hearted manipulation that could make your blood run cold,” Dimmock told Fox News Digital. “This is not what we think danger looks like. God, she’s such a master manipulator. She is so deceptive. It’s really unfathomable the lengths that she will go to avoid accountability. So much of what happened just never needed to happen.”
Simmons-Hancock, an Arkansas native, met Parker while searching for an affordable photographer for her wedding to Homer Hancock. Recommended by a friend, Parker seemed like the perfect fit, and the two quickly formed a friendship. Their bond grew even stronger when Simmons-Hancock learned she was pregnant with her second child. Parker claimed she was expecting as well, telling friends and family she was pregnant with her third child.
But Parker’s pregnancy was a lie. Few people — including her boyfriend, Wade Griffin — knew she had undergone a hysterectomy years earlier and could not have children.
“Taylor got together with Reagan under the premise of bonding over their pregnancies, something they were both ‘sharing’ at the time,” Dimmock explained. “But of course, it’s not true. Only Reagan was pregnant. Only Reagan was going through her third trimester.”
Parker orchestrated an elaborate pregnancy hoax that fooled friends, family and her boyfriend for months. She wore a silicone baby bump, shared fake ultrasound images, staged medical appointments and documented her supposed growing baby bump on social media. She also held a gender-reveal party, posed for maternity photos and prepared a nursery, as if she were expecting a baby girl.
Even as cracks began to appear in her story, Parker doubled down on the deception, fabricating medical records and pregnancy updates to keep the ruse alive. She even used pandemic restrictions to her advantage, telling her boyfriend that COVID-era protocols allowed only one person at prenatal appointments, preventing him from accompanying her.
The documentary suggested that Parker faked her pregnancy in hopes it would keep her and Griffin together.
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“From where I sit, I’m not sure that having a baby was even the priority as much as it was having a baby to keep her relationship going,” said Dimmock. “On the surface, that’s what it is. But underneath the surface, it’s deeper. Something is very wrong. She is a compulsive liar. She manipulated people long before this happened. There is something very broken and dangerous about the way she interacts with the world.”
“It’s quite clear pretty early on that there were lots of red flags,” Dimmock continued. “It’s quite clear that a lot of what she’s telling people doesn’t add up. And yet, she has this ability to always provide an explanation in a way that throws people off her trail. It’s her ability to constantly throw curveballs that kept the charade going.”
Those who knew Simmons-Hancock all described her as “an exceptional mother” who was her sister’s best friend, a loving wife and someone who saw the good in people, said Dimmock.
“Reagan was a completely unsuspecting victim in all of this,” said Dimmock. “It all came down like a bolt of lightning. No one saw it coming.”
On the morning of Oct. 9, 2020, Simmons-Hancock, who was in the final weeks of her pregnancy, was found dead inside her home. Authorities later said she suffered more than 100 sharp-force injuries and had her skull crushed with a hammer, the Associated Press reported. A scalpel was used to remove her unborn baby, later identified as Braxlynn Sage.
Simmons-Hancock’s 3-year-old daughter was still inside the property during the attack but wasn’t physically harmed.
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Later that same day, police stopped Parker on the road for driving erratically. Parker frantically told officers she had just given birth on the side of the road and the newborn wasn’t breathing. Emergency responders quickly transported Parker and the infant to a hospital. The baby was pronounced dead on arrival.
Medical staff quickly determined that Parker showed no signs of recent childbirth. They also revealed that she did not have a uterus due to a previous hysterectomy. Pregnancy would have been biologically impossible. DNA testing established that the infant was not hers. She was Simmons-Hancock’s daughter. Parker was arrested.
Dimmock said Simmons-Hancock’s family is still struggling with the murder.
“They are an incredible family with an incredible network of support and love around them,” said Dimmock. “But what happened will never make sense. They have an incredibly strong faith, which I think is a part of what has helped them. But they made it clear, they would not wish this on anyone.”
In the documentary, Griffin admitted to grappling with guilt for not noticing any signs of deceit sooner.
“We have the interrogation video, and he immediately calls out the fact that his family had been telling him that she couldn’t be pregnant, and yet he chose to stick up for Taylor,” said Dimmock.
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“And in sitting down with him, it’s so clear that he never wanted something like this to happen. He’s going to have to carry the trauma of being part of this for a long time in the eyes of his community and, I think, in his own heart. But ultimately, he was not the one who hurt Reagan. He was not the one who committed violence against her and he wasn’t the one who was lying.”
Parker faked her pregnancy for 10 months. Dimmock believes that Parker, who was worried about losing Griffin, was “flailing and getting desperate.”
“She was panicking,” said Dimmock. “I don’t think that Reagan was her intended victim months out. I think she was looking at a variety of things. But the reality is, what she was trying to do is completely insane, completely unhinged. She was looking at everything from adoptions to faking home birth certificates to stalking pregnant women outside of OB-GYN offices.”
“I always think Taylor is thinking one step ahead and she’s never thinking two steps or more ahead. She knew what she was going to do, which was to get a baby in her hands. But I don’t think she had really thought about what the next step was going to be. She clearly didn’t think about the repercussions for anyone else.”
Parker’s attorneys argued that the baby was never alive and moved to dismiss a kidnapping charge, which would have lowered the capital murder charge to murder, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors said, however, that several medical professionals testified that the infant had a heartbeat when born. They also recounted Parker’s actions leading up to the day Simmons-Hancock was killed.
Parker, now 33, is currently on Texas death row.
“This is a story of an unlikely perpetrator and an unlikely victim in an unlikely set of circumstances,” said Dimmock. “It’s a story about danger not always looking like what we are taught danger looks like.”
