She once captured the happiest moments of their lives, only to later turn them into a horrific nightmare.
As a wedding photographer, Taylor Parker appeared to be the perfect choice for Reagan Simmons Hancock’s special day. Her charm and skill behind the camera put everyone at ease, capturing stunning, candid images of the joyous occasion.
Emily Shirey, Hancock’s sister, shared in Netflix’s Maternal Instinct that Parker’s warm demeanor made her feel like a close friend rather than just a hired professional. “Taylor made sure she greeted everybody and told everybody who she was,” Shirey said. “At times, it felt like she was part of the bridal party herself.”
The rapport they built didn’t end there. In the months following the wedding, Parker and Hancock developed a genuine friendship.
Tragically, this bond was shattered on October 9, 2020. On that day, Parker, who had fabricated a pregnancy, brutally assaulted Hancock, who was indeed expecting. The attack left Hancock with over 100 sharp force injuries. In a horrifying turn, Parker forcibly removed the unborn child from Hancock’s womb in an attempt to pass the baby off as her own, as detailed in court records.
When the deadly ruse was uncovered, investigators learned the fake pregnancy was just one of the staggering lies Parker told about her life.
To find out more about murders of Hancock and baby Braxlynn Sage and how Parker pulled off the elaborate pregnancy con for months, read on below:
Who is Taylor Parker?
In many ways, Parker—a single mom of two—was a classic country girl, enjoying small town life, helping on the farm and often gravitating to cowboys.
“She made you feel like the best person on the planet,” friend Mackenzie Bright recalled in the documentary. “She loved attention.”
It seemed like Parker may have met her perfect match after meeting hog farmer Wade Griffin at the rodeo in August 2019.
“She was a pretty girl,” Griffin remembered in Maternal Instinct. “You know, just kind of lit up the room when she walked in, smiling from ear to ear.”
Parker allegedly told Griffin, according to the documentary, she came from a wealthy Texas oil family and was expecting to inherit millions from her grandmother.
How did Taylor Parker Pull Off Her Pregnancy Con?
Then, just months into the courtship in January 2020, Parker announced that she was pregnant, according to the court records.
In the following months, Parker pulled off the pregnancy ruse with the help of a silicone belly and sonogram she had purchased online, per the court records. Then, she prepared the nursery, took maternity photos and hosted an elaborate gender reveal party, where a cow with a pink bow around its neck revealed she would be expecting a girl.
But some of Parker’s former friends and doctors knew her claim couldn’t possibly be true.
After welcoming her first two children, Parker had a tubal ligation after suffering from preeclampsia with her son, per the court records. Two years later, she had an ectopic pregnancy, a dangerous condition in which the egg incorrectly implants in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus.
During surgery to resolve the issue, doctors discovered she had “complex cysts and scarring from endometriosis” and—with her then-husband’s permission—performed a hysterectomy, according to the court records.
Her doctors couldn’t disclose that they knew about Parker’s inability to carry a child due to privacy laws, they explained in the documentary, even as word of her pregnancy spread throughout the small community.
“During that summer, our time together was very limited,” Griffin explained of how he never caught onto the deception. “She never hardly ever wanted me to see her naked or anything because she said she was insecure because of her stretch marks. We never really did anything at all, pretty much.”
What Happened to Reagan Simmons Hancock?
After Parker’s so-called due date came and went in September 2020 with no birth, prosecutors said she was feeling increasing pressure to produce a baby to continue the ruse.
Then, on the morning of October 9, 2020, Parker told Griffin she was being induced at a hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma, instructing him to drop off a load of hogs and then meet her the hospital.
Rather than head to the hospital, Parker went to Hancock’s New Boston, Texas home around 7:30 a.m. and viciously attacked her, chasing her throughout the home, according to court records.
Medical examiner Dr. Melinda Flores testified at trial that Hancock suffered 113 sharp force injuries, including 15 stab wounds and 98 incised wounds, per court records. She also suffered 39 blunt force injuries, which Flores theorized may have been delivered by a hammer.
“Dr. Flores also testified that there was evidence of possible strangulation,” read the Texas’ Court of Criminal Appeals opinion. “Reagan lost so much blood in the attack that some of her wounds did not even bleed due to low blood pressure.”
After killing Hancock, Parker performed a “crude C-section” to remove the baby, per the records, slicing into Hancock’s lower abdomen and opening her uterus.
How Was Taylor Parker Caught?
Less than half an hour later, Parker was spotted by Texas Trooper Lee Shavers “driving erratically, speeding, and almost hitting another vehicle,” according to facts laid out in the opinion. After she was pulled over along the side of the road, Parker claimed she was on her way to the hospital and asked for the officer’s help.
“I had my baby,” a hysterical Parker said in body cam footage shown in the documentary. “And I’m trying to get to I—Idabel Hospital where…my husband’s up there.”
In court, Shavers described the baby as being “very limp” and “kind of white in color” and was not breathing. The child—who Hancock had planned to name Braxlynn Sage Hancock—later died at the hospital.
“She was beautiful,” noted an obituary, “and the precious little sister to Kynlee and leaves behind a host of relatives.”
At the hospital, doctors quickly began to suspect that Parker was lying after finding no evidence to suggest that she had recently given birth.
After one OSBI investigator asked “where’d this baby come from?,” Parker continued to insist “It’s mine,” according to body camera footage from the emergency room, included in the documentary.
She was arrested at the hospital and charged with capital murder.
Hancock’s Body Discovered Inside Her Home
Investigators linked the baby to Hancock, after her mother Jessica Brookes went to check on her at home and made a grisly discovery.
“Help me,” Brookes screamed in a 911 call replayed in the doc, “my daughter’s been murdered!”
Hancock’s older daughter was still inside the home with her mother’s dead body and had to be rescued by a family friend.
After examining Hancock’s body, police quickly learned that her baby had been cut out of her womb.
“I didn’t really have no words for nothing at that point,” Griffin said in Maternal Instinct of the moment he discovered the truth from police. “I don’t even know how to explain it. Just betrayal from the lies, everything. I never, ever wanted anything like that to happen. It was unimaginable what she did.”
Where is Taylor Parker Now?
After her arrest, Parker’s other lies were also exposed, including her claim that she stood to inherit millions, according to the doc.
She went on trial and was convicted of the murder of Hancock and her baby in October 2022. She was sentenced to death and remains on death row at Texas Department of Correction’s O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville, Texas.
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to review Parker’s case, per the Texarkana Gazette.
“The whole point behind it all, I really don’t know,” Griffin remarked in the documentary. “I guess she was hoping one day…I’d finally tell her that I loved her, but I never—I never did.”
His mother Connie Griffin said her son continues to feel the fallout from Parker’s crimes.
“I’ve watched him cry and cry,” she said in Maternal Instinct. “People were so angry at what had happened and I didn’t blame them. They avoid him. They turn and walk the other way. And it’s hard everywhere he goes. It never goes away. It never will.”