Taylor Parker was convicted in Texas for the 2020 murder of Reagan Hancock, a 21-year-old pregnant woman. Prosecutors said Taylor had spent months faking a pregnancy to keep her boyfriend from leaving her, creating fake medical records, staging baby-related events, and presenting herself as expecting a child. In October 2020, she went to Reagan’s home, killed her, cut her unborn baby from her womb, and then attempted to pass the newborn off as her own. Neither Reagan or the baby survived.
We covered this case in real time on our social media when it happened. It has been on our list to cover for a long time. There is a new Netflix documentary titled “Maternal Instinct” on the case.
We will start as always with some background on the people involved.
Reagan Simmons was born on November 14, 1998. According to her obituary, her parents were Jessica and Marcus Brookes and Brandon and Kristen Simmons. Reagan had two brothers and two sisters. She also had a daughter from a previous relationship, Kynlee Grace.
Reagan married Homer Hancock on September 21, 2019. As of October 2020, Reagan was around 35 weeks/8 months pregnant with her second child, another daughter. They were living in New Boston, Texas.
Reagan was said to be an amazing wife, mother, daughter, sister and a friend. She was said to be a joy to all who knew her.
Taylor Rene Morton was born on December 8, 1992 to Shona Prior and Mark Morton. She has at least one sibling – a brother, Zachary. Taylor has a son from her first marriage and a daughter from a previous relationship. She has been married at least twice – to Tommy Waycasey and Hunter Parker. She has used both of those surnames over the years.
Taylor and Reagan knew each other. They were friends on Facebook and it’s been reported that Taylor was the photographer at Reagan’s 2019 wedding.
Check out our original blog for the social media interactions between the two women:
We now know that Taylor was lying about the pregnancy. She lied to her boyfriend and to friends and spent months maintaining her deception. Along with her social media posts, Taylor created fake medical records. She also researched childbirth, c-sections and caring for an infant. Taylor also purchased baby bedding and a fake baby belly.
As this case has now gone through the legal process, we can tell some of the story chronologically.
We now know that between September 15 and October 9,2020, Taylor traveled to multiple pregnancy related locations.
On October 8, Taylor carried out a ‘trial run.’ Her cell phone data showed that she left her home and traveled to the area near Reagan’s home between the hours of 6.31am and 7.56am.
The data also showed that Taylor was in the vicinity of Reagan’s home on the night prior to the murders.
Taylor purchased a Talkatone phone number at 7.26pm on October 8 and immediately sent herself a text – possibly testing the service? It’s a VOIP app that allows users to call and text over the internet.
At 4.28am on October 9, Taylor watched YouTube videos about caesarean sections and births from 35 weeks – the exact gestation that Reagan was at in her pregnancy.
Taylor used the spoofed number to communicate with both Reagan and Homer on October 9.
Taylor left her home at 5.26am on October 9. She was seen on CCTV stopped at a gas station and at a McDonald’s.
Homer left Reagan and Kynlee in their home early that morning to go to work. He said that he and Reagan had been communicating via text and that looking back, he found some of the texts unusual She told him she was making ‘biscuits and gravy’ and that she was busy and unable to talk. Taylor and Reagan texted each other between 7.22am and 7.52am. It is thought they agreed to meet up.
At 7.45am, a neighbor, Brittany, noticed that the Hancock’s new black lab puppy was wandering the street. The neighbor said the garage door was up and Reagan’s car was in the garage. The neighbor messaged Homer to say that the dog had escaped. Homer said he was going to try to call Reagan. Brittany put the puppy into the Hancock’s back yard by lifting it over the fence.
We now know that Taylor went to Reagan’s home with the intent of stealing her unborn baby. Reagan and Homer had intended to call the baby Braxlynn Sage.
Authorities have said they believe Reagan was killed between 7.52am and 9.14am.
When Homer could not get in contact with Reagan, he went to their home where he found the body of his wife, covered in blood. At 10.35am, Homer called Brittany (neighbor) and said “My wife is dead.”
“I was in shock for a second. I was like, “‘What?! We were just over there!’” She said.
Reagan’s cause of death was determined to have been sharp-force injuries inflicted during a violent attack.
The autopsy found that she suffered:
Multiple stab wounds and cutting injuries.
Significant trauma to her neck and upper body.
A large abdominal incision associated with the removal of her unborn child.
Defensive wounds on her hands and arms, indicating she fought back.
The medical examiner testified that Reagan was alive when the abdominal incision was made, a detail that prosecutors emphasized during the trial. The official cause of death was not the fetal extraction alone, but the combination of severe sharp-force injuries and blood loss resulting from the attack.
According to Oxygen, Reagan was likely beaten with a claw hammer, as well as a mason jar of pink and blue sand that had been from her gender reveal party.
Taylor obviously fled with the baby before Reagan’s body was found. At 9.36am, Taylor called 911 from her car.
“I have a state trooper behind me and I need an ambulance because I started having my baby!”
They ask what number she’s calling from. She’s saying she has to get to Idabel.
“That’s where my doctor is!” Taylor cried. “I started having my baby!”
Taylor is heard yelling, “We gotta get to Idabel, there’s where my doctor is! I’m not going to St. Michael’s!”
At this point, Taylor was also on the phone with 911 dispatcher.
Taylor continues to insist on going to Idabel, not CHRISTUS St. Michaels in Texarkana or Titus Regional Medical Center, crying as she pleads with the trooper.
“Please, just put us in your car, I’m begging you!”
“How old is the baby?” the trooper asks.
“The baby is only like maybe 35 minutes old!” Taylor responds.
The LifeNet dispatcher asks Taylor if the baby was just born. LifeNet dispatch asks a few questions about whether the baby is breathing or if there is any green stuff in the nose or mouth, and gives her CPR instructions.
Taylor can be heard saying, “Come on Clancy, come on!”
“I’m going to Idabel! Okay, then I’ll take myself!” she tells the trooper. “I refuse to go to St. Michaels. I don’t want to go to St. Michael’s I want to go to Idabel. My doctor is in Oklahoma! Please!”
We also hear a portion of Taylor’s end of a call to Wade, telling him, “I started having her, I could not drive! I was trying to push a baby out! The ambulance is here!”
Leonzel Shavers, the Texas DPS trooper who pulled Taylor over, spoke about the scene.
As he pulls up, the driver is waving out the window, urging him to come quickly. As he approaches, he hears a frantic female voice. She’s on the phone with 911. He asks her what’s wrong and sees a newborn baby in her lap. The umbilical cord was still attached with the other end tucked into her yoga pants.
Shavers testified that he noticed the hand with the phone was shaking, but the other hand, on the baby in her lap, was perfectly still. The baby did not appear to be moving or breathing.
A woman who stopped to help stepped in to give the baby CPR. Later, she and an off-duty EMT decided they need to take Taylor’s yoga pants off, believing she just gave birth. They got some trauma shears and cut them off. As they were cutting off the pants, the placenta fell on the floorboard. They changed her into a pair of pajama pants they found in her car.
Amanda Pirkey works at the school across the street from where Parker was pulled over. She maintains her nursing certification. She was headed back to the school from picking up a prescription when she looked over and saw the Corolla on the side of the road with the driver’s side door open and what looked like a small child sitting on someone’s lap.
Pirkey says she got to the overpass, but her gut told her to turn back. Something was wrong. She started googling infant CPR to refresh her memory in case that was the situation. She asked the trooper if there was a baby in distress. There was. The baby was lifeless, kind of blue around the mouth, cold, and clammy. She started doing chest compressions on the baby in Parker’s lap.
Pirkey says the baby did not look like one that had just been born. It’s usually messy. They’re covered in blood and vernix. This baby looked like she had been wiped off. But at the time, Pirkey says, she just assumed it was a baby that had just been born and she focused on doing what she needed to do.
After EMTs arrived, they were asking Taylor what her due date was. She said it was the 30th. The nurse said, “Oh, she’s early,” assuming she meant October, Pirkey recalled. Parker corrected her and told her the due date was in September.
“And we both looked at each other because she was small. So we were kind of concerned for that.”
Pirkey says Parker wanted to clean up.
“’Can I get this stuff off me?’” Pirkey recalls her asking. “‘I want to get this blood off me.’” This is when Pirkey got the paper towels and water bottles. She gave her one to drink and used the other to clean her face. She says she gave Parker a towel to clean her hands off because they had blood all over them. As she did that, she cleaned one of Parker’s feet. Parker reached down and did the other, commenting something like, “‘This grosses me out,’ or, ‘This disgusts me,” Pirker recalls, adding that Parker made a gagging noise.
At 10.15am, Reagan’s mother Jessica Brookes also called 911. This info is from KTAL News:
“Help me! My daughter’s been murdered!” Brookes frantically tells the dispatcher, who asks what happened. Brookes is so distraught it is hard to make out everything she is saying.
“I don’t know! Somebody (unintelligible)…there’s blood everywhere! Oh, my babies! Oh my God!”
The dispatcher tells Brookes that officers are on their way.
Brookes can be heard crying and calling out to her husband Marcus, who went over to the house with her that morning after Homer called and asked her to check on Reagan. She is asking Marcus, “Did they hurt her? I can’t do this. My baby, my baby, my baby!”
Jessica is heard asking if Kynlee, Reagan’s 3-year-old daughter, is okay.
“I can’t tell what happened. Did they just hurt her? What did they do? There’s so much blood. There’s so much blood!”
Three minutes into the call, Kynlee is heard asking, “Where’s mommy?”
Authorities transported Taylor to hospital where it was determined that she had not given birth. An internal exam revealed no blood in her vaginal cavity and that she also did not have a cervix (which was removed during her hysterectomy). Blood tests also showed no evidence of pregnancy hormones. Attempts were made to save Braxlynn. She had been deprived of oxygen for too long and had suffered brain damage. She was taken off life support and pronounced dead at 1.22pm that day.
Taylor was charged with capital murder, murder and kidnapping. Taylor told investigators that she got “in a physical altercation with Simmons and abducted the unborn child.”
Taylor admitted that she had used a “small scalpel” to remove the unborn infant from Reagan’s body, and that she had left the scalpel at the scene. A small scalpel was found in Reagan’s neck during her autopsy.
Authorities interviewed Taylor’s boyfriend Wade. He said she had told him she had to go to the hospital in Idabel to pre-register for a birth induction on October 9.
The case went to trial in 2022 and we learned so much about the lead up to the murders. The trial ran for three weeks and we are going to run through the most pertinent info in this episode. KTAL news did day-by-day recaps which we have linked on the blog if you want to deep dive.
- Tommy Wacasey, Taylor’s ex-husband, took the stand. He told the court that in 2014, Taylor had opted for sterilization following the birth of their son. He also said that in 2015 she had a hysterectomy following surgery for ovarian cysts, endometriosis and a tubal pregnancy. The doctor asked Tommy to decide whether to go ahead with the hysterectomy and that he told the doctor to do what he would do for their own loved one.
- According to Tommy, Taylor “flew off the handle” when she woke up from surgery and learned her uterus and one ovary had been removed. She wanted to know why they did not wake her up so she could make the decision for herself.
- When Tommy heard the news about Taylor’s 2020 pregnancy, he said he used an anonymous number to reach out to Wade. He didn’t want Taylor to know it was him because it would have made his life difficult.
- “It’s funny how Taylor is pregnant but every hospital with a 60 mile radius is watching for her because they’re scared she’s gonna come in and steal a baby because there’s no possible way she’s pregnant and they all know that because They got all the hospital records,” cell phone records show Tommy texted to Wade on September 11, less than one month before the murders.
- Three days later, Tommy texted Wade again to tell him Taylor was not pregnant. On September 16, he texted him again.
- “I’m reaching out to you because I feel like it’s the ethical thing to do. In 2015 Taylor had a hysterectomy. She isn’t pregnant. She can’t get pregnant! She’s a con artist and is lying to keep you around. I’m sure you haven’t been to one Dr appointment with her, for whatever reason.”
- Tommy told Wade that the two sonograms Taylor had been sharing on social media were faked, with one being a scan from her pregnancy with her daughter with her name and the name of the clinic cut off.
- “I don’t do drama, not at all, but because I know for a fact she isn’t pregnant and is running out of time. I had to reach out. Please be careful! She has lied about so much for so long she has her self in so deep she can’t get out. I’m concerned how far she might go with this. All hospitals are high alert because she may go to the extent of stealing a child!”
Taylor’s mother Shona also testified. She told the court that she knew Taylor was not pregnant but did not confront her daughter about it. “Not much you can do about a fake pregnancy,” Shonna Prior told Taylor Parker’s defense attorney, Jeff Harrelson. “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 would figure it out.”
Shona also said that the relationship with her daughter deteriorated once she started dating Wade. Taylor unfriended her mother on Facebook.
“She just became a different person when she got with him.”
She testified that she texted the congratulatory screenshot to her daughter.
“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?”
“You are,” she says Taylor responded.
But Shona said she never replied to Taylor’s text, and they never discussed it again.
“Why not?” Harrelson asked.
“Because she knew that I knew that I wasn’t going to be a grandma again.
“Why didn’t you have a conversation with Taylor?” First Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp asked.
“Hindsight’s 20/20. I can’t tell you what would have happened if we had done that. We figured the lie was going to be exposed, there were so many people who knew it was a lie and just kept on buying it. I’m not shifting the blame, I just figured he would figure it out. 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.”
“’If I would have confronted her in person, I feared that she would keep my grandkids from me,’”
We have also learned about a ruse that Taylor concocted to keep Wade busy while she attempted to carry out her plan.
On September 22, 2020, a ‘Taylor Griffin’ contacted a man named Scott Robinson. Scott buys hogs for clients to hunt and shoot on his land.
Taylor called him and tried to sell him some hogs. Scott told the court that there were immediate red flags – Taylor did not know about the license needed to transport livestock and she wanted to be paid upfront.
“That was a little weird, but not a deal breaker for me,” he testified. But he also thought it was odd for someone who wanted to sell 150 hogs not to know what kind of license they need to have.
“That’s a huge load. At that point, I started questioning the legitimacy of the deal.”
He ultimately told her that he didn’t think she was being truthful and he called off the deal “Good luck,” he said.
Taylor obviously told Wade about this deal but neglected to mention that it wasn’t going ahead. Wade showed up to Scott’s ranch on the morning of October 9 at 7.35am with a trailer full of hogs. Scott got a shock as he wasnt expecting anyone.
Wade told Scott that he was owed $6,100 for hogs.
Wade said he had an order for Scott and showed him a text allegedly from him.
“I said, “That’s not even my phone number. And it’s acting as if it’s me and it’s not me. “
“Wade this is Scott,” the text says. “I will see you both in the morning around 6:30-7. Taylor said check made out to Wade Griffin, check total $6,100. I have seven groups of hunters this weekend need those hogs tomorrow for sure. Turned two guys away today with hogs. Drive safe. I’ll send address for GPS. Thanks man.”
Scott said he started to put two and two together when he saw that Wade’s last name was Griffin. He remembered the weird interaction he had with ‘Taylor Griffin’ weeks before.
He showed Wade the real text conversation they had on his phone.
“‘This is not from me,’” Scott told Wade. “‘This is a bogus deal. I didn’t want ’em, I didn’t order ’em and I’m not doing this deal,’” before telling his ranch manager to show Wade out.
“Someone is pretending to be me. Here he is, stuck. It was a crap show from the beginning.”
He heard Wade telling someone on phone, presumably Taylor, “This guy says he doesn’t want these hogs.”
This interaction between the men went on until around 9.30/10am when Scott agreed to buy the hogs for $2,500 which was less than the asking price.
Homer also took the stand. He said that on the night before the murders, he and his family sat down to eat dinner. Reagan told him that Taylor was coming over that night. This info is from KTAL news:
Taylor’s name had been coming up during that week, Reagan had seen. Homer doesn’t know what they did or where they went, but he knows Taylor gave Reagan a baby gift.
Reagan and Taylor visited in the couple’s breakroom for 45 minutes or so. He was ready to go to bed, so texted her. They headed to the room that will be Braxlynn’s nursery. He heard them talking about Taylor helping decorate it. He went to bed. He doesn’t know what time Parker left.
He also spoke about the messages that ‘Reagan’ sent him on the morning of the murder.
“That wasn’t the way she talked.
”What’s the deal, is something wrong?” She seemed to be trying to start a conversation. This is not typical of her, at least not in this way. She tells him she just wants to be happy and it’s just not working. They text back and forth, but something is off. When whoever was texting from Reagan’s phone seemed to be ending the conversation, Homer replies at 8:33 a.m. replies, “I love you.”
Reagan never responded.
Taylor’s ex-husband Hunter Parker took the stand. He said that Taylor did not tell him she was infertile until after they were married. He said she claimed to have many medical issues and even faked seizures in order to keep him from leaving her.
Hunter said that Taylor tried to get him to get a loan and use a surrogate so that they could have a biological child. Taylor said her grandmother would pay for it using cash. The cash would be delivered by a man named “Tim Hightower.” He received several texts from the person who claimed to be Hightower, including a picture of a duffel bag of cash, but Taylor subsequently told him that Hightower had gotten in an accident on the way to deliver the money and that the first responders had stolen the money. He said he didn’t believe her.
Hunter said they separated in April 2019 and that Taylor began dating Wade Griffin within weeks.
Two of Taylor’s friends testified that, after her second marriage to Hunter Parker, she desperately wanted to have a daughter but told them she was unable to because she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She allegedly offered each friend $100,000 to act as a surrogate, though neither was interested. She also allegedly told people she’d miscarried twins, that she’d lost a subsequent daughter immediately after giving birth and that she and Hunter had successfully hired a surrogate but that Hunter had cheated on her with the woman.
Other lies that Taylor had told came out during the trial. She told Wade initially that she was an heiress and had $4.5m with which she would buy a walnut farm for them. She then said that her mother had stolen the inheritance and hired a hitman to kill Taylor and Wade. She would go on to tell Wade that she had hired her own private detective who foiled the plot.
The defense did not dispute that Taylor had killed Reagan. They focused on trying to reduce the charge and avoid a death sentence. Taylor’s lawyers argued that a kidnapping law could only be applied to someone who has been born. They also alleged that the prosecution failed to prove that the baby had been born alive before dying.
Taylor’s defense team spoke about her history of mental illness, pathological lying and personality disorders. These diagnoses were the reason they argued that she should be given a life sentence instead of death.
142 witnesses were called during the trial.
On October 3, 2022, the jury took less than one hour to find Taylor guilty. She was convicted of capital murder. Prosecutors successfully argued she murdered Reagan during the commission of a kidnapping, making the crime eligible for the death penalty under Texas law.
On November 9, 2022, the jury sentenced Taylor to death.
“We are just glad justice has been served, not only for our family, our friends, the prosecution team, our community,” said Jessica Brooks, Reagan’s mother.
Reagan’s sister Emily said “I’m overwhelmed with happiness it’s over because she has been such a burden in our life for so long now that I haven’t been able to think about my sister without thinking about her.”
The last order given by Judge John Tidwell was, “Take her to death row.”
An appeal was undertaken in 2025 and Taylor’s conviction and death sentence were upheld. No execution date has yet been set and she remains on death row while additional legal proceedings continue.
SOURCE LIST
https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/court-of-criminal-appeals/2025/ap-77-110.html
https://www.batesrolffuneralhome.com/obituary/reagan-braxlynn-hancock
https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/parkertaylor.html
https://www.ktalnews.com/news/crime/day-7-jury-hears-frantic-911-calls-in-taylor-parker-trial
https://www.kltv.com/2022/11/09/taylor-parker-sentenced-death-capital-murder