NETFLIX viewers have been left reeling by the chilling case of Taylor Parker, a woman who faked a pregnancy for months before murdering her friend and stealing her unborn baby.
Parker, 33, is one of the youngest women on Texas death row following the brutal killing of 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock in October 2020.
The murder is being revisited in the new documentary, Maternal Instinct, which dropped last week.
The film features emotional interviews with Reagan’s loved ones, as well as Parker’s ex-boyfriend, Wade Griffin, and members of his family, many of whom describe the killer as “evil.”
But there was a lot of chilling evidence left out of the final edit that featured heavily during the trial in 2022.
Parker spent 10 months faking a pregnancy, wearing a fake baby bump and even hosting a gender-reveal party.
As her purported due date approached, prosecutors said she attacked Reagan at the victim’s home in New Boston, Texas, striking her with a hammer and a mason jar before stabbing her more than 100 times.
She then used a scalpel to remove Reagan’s unborn daughter, Braxlynn Sage, from her womb and fled.
Parker later claimed she had given birth on the side of the road and arrived at a hospital with the baby, who tragically did not survive.
But after Parker refused a medical examination, staff began to realize the horrifying truth.
Silence from Death Row
Viewers saw Parker in social media clips, home videos, and bodycam footage after the murder, but she was not interviewed on death row.
Director Jessica Dimmock said that she deliberately chose not to center the film on Parker and her family, instead focusing on those whose lives were forever changed by the crime.
“What I really wanted to do was include the perspectives of the people that it affected the most,” she told USA Today.
“How did Wade feel about it at the time? How does he feel about it now, looking back? How is Reagan’s family altered forever?”
Dimmock said it seems unfathomable that someone could have killed Reagan and taken her baby.
“I hope that she is remembered for not just this crime, but for being an amazing wife, sister, daughter and mother,” she added.
How could Wade not know?
Since the documentary dropped, one of the biggest questions on social media has been, “How could Wade not know she was faking a pregnancy?”
Wade admitted in court that he had some doubts but whenever he questioned Parker, she had an answer.
He testified, “I’ve got my mom telling me one thing, Taylor telling me another. But I’ve been with Taylor this whole time, so I’m going with her.”
The jury heard that he did continue to have a sexual relationship while she was wearing a fake baby bump, but Parker demanded the lights be turned off before they got intimate.
She also claimed he could not be present for a lot of her medical appointments due to COVID-19 rules.
As her fake due date approached and her alleged bump grew, she alleged she was experiencing severe complications and was at a high risk for a miscarriage.
This was the excuse she used to keep Wade from touching her, he claimed.
Wade’s mother testified that he did touch Parker’s belly at points, but he didn’t realize he was touching silicone through layers of clothes.
She claimed Wade simply “didn’t know anything about pregnancy” or what a real pregnant abdomen was supposed to feel like.
Her mom knew the truth
Parker’s mother, Shona Prior, offered some of the trial’s most revealing testimony, but she was also missing from the documentary.
Netflix viewers saw how Parker often lied about her mother, claiming she was evil and even faking text messages from her, but little was said about their relationship.
In reality, the pair had barely spoken for months before the murder.
Prior was with Parker when she had a hysterectomy and knew that she couldn’t be pregnant, according to KTAL News, which covered the trial.
Her mom told jurors that a pal sent her a screenshot of a Facebook post from Parker’s gender reveal party, which her mom was not invited to, in 2019.
“So I sent it to Taylor and said, ‘What am I supposed to tell my girlfriends telling me I’m gonna be a grandmother again?” Prior told the court.
She claimed that Parker responded, “You are,” and the pair did not speak about it again.
Prior admitted she never directly confronted Parker, saying, “She knew she wasn’t pregnant. We knew she wasn’t pregnant.
“There was no need to come up with a plan. We figured the lie would be exposed. He [Wade] would figure it out.”
Her family told the court that Parker had a long history of telling elaborate lies and said they had become accustomed to her behavior.
As Wade’s family began questioning whether she was really pregnant, Prior warned them of her concerns but largely stayed out of the situation.
Prior told the court, “His mother was aware of it, his brother was aware of it. It’s like everyone around them was aware of it. We did not feel the need to call them up.”
The murder weapons
Blood was shown in a few selective photos and video clips from the crime scene during the film, along with some key details from Reagan’s autopsy.
However, a great deal about what transpired on that fatal day, which was detailed during the trial, was left out of the documentary.
The precision and horrific nature of the weapons were central to proving Parker’s intense premeditation.
The medical examiner testified that Reagan suffered 39 blunt-force injuries, which resulted in five distinct skull fractures and a broken nose.
These devastating injuries indicated that Parker repeatedly struck Reagan in the face and head with a claw hammer.
Furthermore, she weaponized a heavy, four-pound glass jar filled with wedding keepsakes and shattered it against Reagan.
Parker also pre-packed a medical scalpel into her bag, which she used to stab her victim more than 100 times.
During the autopsy, examiners made a chilling discovery: the scalpel was found lodged deep inside Reagan’s neck.
Two of the slash wounds had perforated her jugular vein, and the blade had been left behind.
Explosive jail calls
During the high-profile trial, prosecutors played a series of bombshell recorded jail calls between Parker and her mother.
Instead of showing remorse or addressing the gravity of the horrific crime, the tapes exposed a chilling disconnect from reality that prosecutors used to demonstrate her lack of conscience.
In one distressing call, the cold-blooded killer could be heard crying to her mother about being denied contact with her own two children.
Her mom fired back that if she had been thinking of them she would not have ended up behind bars.
In other calls, she actively complained about the district attorney “stacking charges” against her, dismissively referring to the murder and fetal abduction as “just one horrible thing.”
When her mother openly questioned her mental state, asking when she was going to get a psychiatric evaluation because “something is not right with you,” Parker changed the subject.
The attempted cleanup
While first responders were helping Parker at the side of the road and trying to save the baby, her focus was on trying to clean up before she reached the hospital.
During the trial, Amanda Pirkey, a nurse who had stopped to help after Parker was pulled over, testified that the killer appeared more concerned with cleaning blood from her body rather than asking about the newborn.
According to KTAL News, Pirkey recalled Parker asking, “Can I get this stuff off me? I want to get this blood off me.”
Pirkey reportedly got paper towels and water bottles, giving her one to drink and using the other to clean her face.
She also cleaned one of her feet before Parker did the other herself, showing an unusual urgency to wash away the physical evidence of her crime.
As she wiped the blood off, Pirkey said Parker added that it “grosses me out” or “disgusts me” and made a gagging noise, according to the outlet.
Custody and neglect of her children
Viewers were told little about Parker’s backstory, including information about her son and daughter from previous relationships.
During the sentencing phase of her trial, testimony from Parker’s own family members painted a troubling picture of her history as a parent.
They claimed that her daughter, Emersyn, with her high school boyfriend, Donald Whiteside, and her son, Trey, with her first husband, Tommy Wacasey, were never her focus.
Official court documents from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals detail that following her 2017 divorce from Wacasey, Parker voluntarily surrendered custody of her son.
Meanwhile, her family often cared for her daughter despite Parker having custody, as Whiteside remained entirely absent.
The court heard he had never met the child.
Parker’s brother, Zachary Morton, testified that just as their own father had put them on the “back burner” the killer similarly neglected her children.
He told the court, “It seemed like when Taylor was chasing another man, instead of the focus being on her children, it was on herself. It was all about her at one specific time.”
Following her arrest and subsequent conviction, Parker’s daughter is now being cared for by her mother.