Taylor Parker spent roughly 10 months constructing a fake pregnancy before she killed Reagan Simmons-Hancock to take her unborn baby. She wore a silicone belly, forged ultrasound images, staged a gender reveal, and posted baby bump photos across her social media accounts.
The audience for all of it was her boyfriend, Wade Griffin, a hog trapper she had met at a rodeo in 2019. She had also told him she came from a wealthy family, and he took on significant debt based on that lie. He was not involved in the crime. He cooperated with investigators and testified at her trial.
On October 9, 2020, Parker drove to the home of Reagan Simmons-Hancock, a 21-year-old acquaintance who was 7 months pregnant, in New Boston, Texas. Reagan’s 3-year-old daughter was in the house and was not physically harmed.
Reagan died at the scene. The baby did not survive.
Parker fled with the infant. A Texas state trooper pulled her over for erratic driving on the highway. She told him she had just given birth. She showed no signs of having given birth, the baby was not hers, and the blood in the vehicle did not match her. She was arrested at the scene.
In Bowie County in the fall of 2022, a jury deliberated for roughly an hour before convicting Parker of capital murder for killing Reagan while kidnapping her child. She was sentenced to death on November 9, 2022.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld both the conviction and the death sentence in November 2025. She remains on death row.
Netflix’s documentary about the case, Maternal Instinct, is directed by Jessica Dimmock, whose prior work includes Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields and Flint Town. It is produced by Joshua Levine, Samantha DeMaria, and Jon Bardin, with executive producers Dan Cogan, Liz Garbus, and Tommy Coriale of Story Syndicate.
The documentary premiered on Netflix on June 12, 2026.
