Taylor Parker sits on a Texas death row after being convicted of one of America's rarest and most brutal crimes: the murder of her pregnant friend Reagan Simmons-Hancock in 2020 and the removal of the unborn daughter from her womb. A new Netflix documentary, Maternal Instinct, arriving next week, is bringing the case back into focus.
Parker was 29 when she killed Simmons-Hancock on October 9, 2020. The victim was nearly eight months pregnant. Parker stabbed or slashed her approximately 100 times with a scalpel, then removed the baby, Braxlynn. Simmons-Hancock's three-year-old daughter was found unharmed under a blanket in her bed.
Parker fled with the dead infant but was stopped by a state trooper for erratic driving. She was found covered in dried blood, holding the baby with the umbilical cord still attached. She initially claimed she had given birth on the roadside, but medical staff at a hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma found no evidence of recent childbirth. Under questioning, Parker admitted to a physical altercation with Simmons-Hancock and taking the baby from her body.
Fetal abduction through maternal killing is extraordinarily rare. Between 1987 and 2011, only 15 cases occurred in the United States. Worldwide, perhaps 100 have been recorded. None had ever been documented in the US before 1973.
The prosecution's theory was calculated deception. Parker had deceived her boyfriend, Wade Griffin, into believing she was pregnant. They met at a rodeo in 2019 and threw a gender-reveal party. Griffin, a roofer with side businesses in welding and hog-trapping, did not know that Parker had undergone a hysterectomy in 2019. Parker had also fabricated wealth, claiming to be heir to a syrup fortune while attempting to purchase a 4.7 million dollar estate, though she had only worked at a staffing agency and an OB-GYN clinic.
Simmons-Hancock had been Parker's friend since Parker photographed her engagement and wedding. Investigators presented testimony that Parker had watched numerous videos on delivering and caring for babies, suggesting months of planning to obtain a child she could present as her own to keep her relationship intact.
Death Sentence and Legal Dispute
Parker was convicted of capital murder in October 2022 and sentenced to death a month later. The crime satisfied capital murder charges under Texas law, which treats a fetus as an individual at any stage of gestation.
Her defense did not dispute that she committed the killing. Instead, attorneys sought to prevent a death sentence by arguing Parker should have been charged with murder alone, which carries a sentence of 99 years or life. Capital murder, combined with kidnapping charges, carried either life without parole or execution.
A neurologist testifying for the defense described Parker as suffering from frontal lobe syndrome, a condition involving cognitive, behavioral, emotional and motivational disturbances. The defense characterized Parker as someone whose brain function was severely compromised.
On appeal, Parker's lawyers raised two primary challenges. First, they argued that because the infant was not alive when removed from the mother's womb, there could be no kidnapping charge, making capital murder improper. The baby was the sole witness to whether Braxlynn drew breath.
Second, they contended Parker did not receive a fair trial due to extensive media coverage and social media commentary during the penalty phase. The crime occurred and trial took place in Bowie County, and a change of venue was denied.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction and sentence. Last month, the US Supreme Court declined to review the case on fair trial grounds. No execution date has been scheduled. Parker, now 34, is one of just seven women on death row in Texas.
Caitlin Halpern, who handled Parker's appeals, acknowledged the difficulty jurors face when confronted with such an act. "The crime was so violent, upsetting and unusual that it blinded people to the technical and legal arguments, and perhaps made people less discerning about what would make for a fair trial," Halpern said. "But the system doesn't require empathy. It requires the law to be followed, and we think that really didn't happen here."
Forensic psychologist Gary Brucato of Boston College describes fetal abduction as part of a broader phenomenon of elimination murder, where perpetrators remove obstacles to obtaining what they believe will stabilize a relationship. "Their sense is that they would become a catch to this person if they could just have a child," Brucato said.
The Parker case echoes an earlier execution. In 2021, Lisa Montgomery was executed for attacking and killing 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Missouri in 2004 and stealing her unborn baby. That child survived. Montgomery was the first female prisoner executed by the US government since 1953. She had endured severe childhood abuse and was diagnosed with severe mental illness.
Author James Rodriguez: "The Netflix treatment will likely rekindle debates about whether even extraordinarily brutal crimes deserve death sentences when the perpetrator may be profoundly broken, not evil."
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