Taylor Parker spent ten months wearing a silicone baby bump, staging fake ultrasounds, throwing a gender-reveal party, and posing for maternity photos, all to keep a lie alive. When the lie ran out of time, she drove to the home of a 21-year-old woman she called a friend, inflicted more than 100 sharp-force injuries on her, crushed her skull with a hammer, and used a scalpel to cut the unborn baby from her womb.
Reagan Simmons-Hancock was found dead inside her home on the morning of October 9, 2020. Her three-year-old daughter was on the property during the attack but was not physically harmed. The infant, a girl later named Braxlynn Sage, was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Parker, now 33, sits on Texas death row after a 2022 capital murder conviction. Her case is back in the public eye thanks to a Netflix true-crime documentary titled Maternal Instinct, directed by Jessica Dimmock and executive produced by Liz Garbus. The film revisits the elaborate deception Parker built and the devastation she left behind, a story that reads less like a crime of passion than like the methodical execution of a plan by someone who refused to let reality interfere with what she wanted.
Parker met her boyfriend, Wade Griffin, at a local rodeo in East Texas in July 2019. She had undergone a hysterectomy and could not have children, as Fox News Digital reported. But she told Griffin she was expecting, her third child, she claimed, and set about constructing an airtight performance.
She wore a silicone baby bump. She shared fake ultrasound images. She staged medical appointments and fabricated medical records. She documented her “supposed growing baby bump” on social media. She prepared a nursery. She used COVID-era hospital protocols, which restricted visitors, as cover, ensuring no one could accompany her to appointments and catch the fraud in real time.
Friends noticed problems. Abby Bell, an acquaintance, later said there were red flags about Parker’s pregnancy that left friends perplexed. McKenzie Bright, a former friend, said she and Parker were no longer close by the time the pregnancy was announced and that the news came as a surprise. Griffin’s own family told him Parker couldn’t be pregnant. He chose to stand by her anyway.
Dimmock, the documentary director, described the pattern bluntly in an interview with Fox News Digital:
“It’s quite clear pretty early on that there were lots of red flags. 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.”
Parker befriended Simmons-Hancock under the pretense that they were both expecting. The two women bonded over what Parker presented as a shared experience, the excitement and anxiety of late-stage pregnancy. Only one of them was actually pregnant. Simmons-Hancock, an Arkansas native described by her family as an exceptional mother and loving wife, was carrying her second child and was 35 weeks along.
Parker had done her homework. She researched how to fake a pregnancy. She watched videos on delivering babies preterm at 35 weeks, the exact gestational age of Simmons-Hancock’s baby. Dimmock told Fox News Digital that Parker had also been stalking pregnant women outside OB-GYN offices, looking into adoptions, and exploring how to fake home birth certificates.
Dimmock offered a chilling assessment of what drove Parker’s planning:
“She was panicking. 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.”
Parker, in other words, was not improvising. She was shopping for a baby. And when her options narrowed, she turned to the woman who trusted her most.
The facts of that morning are almost unbearable to recount. Simmons-Hancock suffered more than 100 sharp-force injuries, as the Associated Press reported. Her skull was crushed with a hammer. Parker used a scalpel to remove the unborn baby from her body.
Parker then drove away. Police stopped her on the road after she was spotted driving erratically. She told officers she had just given birth on the side of the road and that the newborn wasn’t breathing. Emergency responders transported Parker and the infant to a hospital.
The story fell apart immediately. Medical staff determined Parker showed no signs of recent childbirth. As the New York Post reported, doctors found it was impossible, Parker did not have a uterus. DNA testing confirmed the infant was Simmons-Hancock’s daughter. Parker was arrested the same day.
The capital murder charge hinged on a single question: Was Braxlynn Sage alive when Parker removed her from her mother’s body?
Parker’s defense attorneys argued the baby was never alive and moved to dismiss a kidnapping charge. If the motion had succeeded, the capital murder charge would have been reduced to murder. Prosecutors countered that several medical professionals testified the infant had a heartbeat when born.
Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards put it plainly after the conviction, as the Washington Examiner reported:
“She’s a liar, a manipulator, and now she’s gonna be held accountable for it.”
Prosecutor Kelley Crisp offered a sharper point about the defense’s own strategy: “The best evidence the state of Texas has that baby was born alive is that Taylor Parker said it wasn’t.”
The jury convicted Parker of capital murder in 2022. She was sentenced to death.
The Simmons-Hancock family lost a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother, along with the baby girl she was carrying. Simmons-Hancock’s mother, Jessica Brookes, said her daughter had been elated to welcome a new baby. Her sister, Emily Shirey, called Reagan her best friend. Her stepfather, Marcus Brookes, described how the killings deeply impacted the family.
Dimmock described the family’s resilience in terms that speak to something deeper than grief:
“They are an incredible family with an incredible network of support and love around them. 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.”
Griffin, Parker’s boyfriend, also carries a burden. In the documentary, he grapples with guilt for not noticing the signs of deceit sooner. Interrogation footage shows him acknowledging that his family had warned him Parker couldn’t be pregnant. He chose to believe her.
Dimmock was careful to draw a line:
“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.”
The Netflix documentary Maternal Instinct traces Parker’s deception from its earliest stages through the killing and its aftermath. Dimmock said the case defied the usual profile of violent crime.
“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.”
The documentary features interviews with friends, family, and others connected to the case, including Codey Ott, a friend of Griffin’s who said Parker initially seemed like an ideal match for his buddy. Dr. Christopher Mason described how it would have been impossible for Parker to become pregnant.
Dimmock’s assessment of Parker’s mindset is worth sitting with:
“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. 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.”
Parker, Dimmock said, was always thinking one step ahead, but never two. She knew how to get a baby in her hands. She never thought about what came next, or what it would cost everyone else.
There is a grim consolation in this case: the justice system did its job. Parker was caught the same day she committed the crime. She was tried. A jury heard the evidence, weighed the disputed question of whether the infant was alive at birth, and convicted her of capital murder. She sits on death row in Texas.
But the case also exposes something no courtroom can fix. Parker operated in plain sight for ten months. She lied to friends, family, medical professionals, and the man she lived with. People noticed the red flags. People raised concerns. And still, the charade held, because the lie was so brazen that decent people couldn’t bring themselves to believe someone would actually do it.
Reagan Simmons-Hancock was 21 years old. She saw the good in people. That instinct cost her everything. The system held Parker accountable after the fact. It could not protect the young mother who never saw the danger standing right beside her.
Some crimes are so calculated, so cold, that they leave nothing to debate. Only a verdict to carry out.
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