Taylor Parker is an American woman whose heinous crimes against a mother and her unborn baby shocked the country and beyond. The Texas-born woman’s story is a testament to the extreme one can get when desperate. It is a story of the consequences of seeing something but not saying something.
Justice has since been served against Parker, described as a pathological liar, manipulator and narcissistic, with borderline, antisocial and histrionic personality disorder.
Therefore, this is the story of Parker who killed her friend to steal her unborn baby.
Who is Taylor Parker?
Taylor Rene Parker is an American woman who murdered a 21-year-old pregnant woman, Reagan Simmons-Hancock, to steal her unborn baby named Braxlynn Sage. Born on August 12, 1992, in Bowie County, Texas, Parker held a clerical job and was divorced twice with two children. She was in another romantic relationship, which many believe was what led her to commit the heinous crime.
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What happened to Taylor Parker?
On July 25, 2019, Parker met Wade Griffin, 27, at the Annual Naples Rodeo & Watermelon Festival, held at the Naples Rodeo Club, Texas. This was three weeks after she divorced her second husband, Hunter Parker. Her boyfriend, Griffin, was a roofing supervisor, who lived in a modest cabin in Simms, a small town in Bowie County, home to about 1,400 residents.
According to True Crime Beat, Parker lied and manipulated her boyfriend from the beginning of her relationship. The publication reported that she lied about moving in with him less than a month after they started dating.
Parker had fabricated a story accusing her mother, Shonia Prior, of hiring a hitman to murder her. Shona reportedly wanted to access a bank account in Parker’s name which had $6 million in it. Parker claimed that her family owned a significant amount of oil-producing land throughout Texas. She promised Griffin land, lucrative business opportunities, and a family estate.
However, Griffin’s mother, Connie Griffin, learned Parker did not have custody of her children, making her question Parker’s authenticity. To cover up, Parker announced that she was pregnant and later announced she had suffered a “miscarriage”.
On the other hand, Griffin was a busy man and was not as invested in the relationship as Parker was. When she first moved in, she was described as a perfect houseguest, making herself available to her boyfriend, looking after his property and livestock, and cooking him delicious meals. Yet, he was still not in love with her, and her constant drama was not helping. He wanted to end it.
Desperate to save her relationship, Parker lied that she was pregnant again in late February 2020. This time, she told everyone, including Griffin, her family, friends and Facebook followers. As her due date was approaching, Parker announced that they were having a baby girl they would name Clancy Gail.
To make her pregnancy look real, Parker wore maternity clothes and regularly posted detailed updates about her pregnancy on Facebook. She shared sonogram photos of her growing baby, which were fake images she purchased from fakeababy.com. Parker also customised the baby’s gender and gestational period and the clinic and physician’s name. She also registered for antenatal visits and because it was the COVID-19 pandemic era, she met with her “doctors” alone. In addition, she organised a gender-reveal party and even invited her doctor.
In reality, Parker was wearing a silicon baby bump she bought online to dissuade growing suspicions about her “pregnancy”. However, her manipulations did not fool her obstetrician-gynecologist (OBGYN) doctor, family, friends and colleagues at work. They all knew she was faking her pregnancy and assumed she would claim a miscarriage later to cover up her lie.
Her due date came and went but there was no baby. Unwilling to confess, Parker plotted a terrible plan all in a desperate bid to keep her boyfriend.
Meanwhile, Griffin had already received a text message from Parker’s ex-first husband, Tommy Wacasey, warning him that she was not pregnant and that hospitals around the area were on “high alert” because of concern that Parker might attempt to kidnap a newborn from a maternity ward.
Her ex-husband also revealed that Parker could not get pregnant because she underwent a full hysterectomy due to complications from an ectopic pregnancy and endometriosis in 2015. Before then, she voluntarily had her tubes tied shortly after she had her second child in 2014. But Griffin reportedly did not believe the information.
Taylor Parker crimes
It was already clear to everyone, except Griffin, that Parker was not pregnant. However, she refused to lower her pride. Determined to have a baby, Parker began to search for local places that pregnant women frequent online on September 14, 2020. The result of her search showed maternity consignment stores and OBGYN clinics throughout East Texas and Shreveport, Louisiana.
In addition, Parker searched teen pregnancy support groups in Texarkana and allegedly attended a meeting. She also searched for instructions on how to complete an out-of-hospital birth certificate and watched YouTube videos on vaginal and C-section births. Her search also included information about giving birth vaginally at 35 weeks and also how to perform a physical exam of a 35-week infant.
On her “due date”, scheduled for September 28, 2020, Parker reportedly started a fire in Griffin’s home, to stall her “delivery”. The next day, she scheduled to be induced again but could not because someone called in a bomb threat to Titus Regional Medical Center in Mount Pleasant, Texas, around 5 am. That “someone” later turned out to be Parker herself, who used a voice-changing app to disguise her voice by sounding masculine.
On October 9, 2020, Parker was caught speeding and was pulled over by a Texas State Trooper in De Kalb. She allegedly told the officer she had given birth by the side of the road and that the baby was not breathing. The baby was reportedly found in her lap with its umbilical cord appearing to come from her pants in an attempt to make it seem like she had just given birth.
Both Parker and the baby were rushed by ambulance to McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel, Okla., where the baby was pronounced dead. However, the hospital staff was suspicious of Parker when she refused to be checked by the doctors.
Reagan Simmons-Hancock was later found dead in her New Boston living room and Parker was arrested in connection to the murder. According to prosecutors, Simmons-Hancock was brutally slashed hundreds of times and beaten with a hammer. The 21-year-old expectant mother was reportedly still alive when her uterus was ripped out from the back.
The husband of the deceased, Homer Hancock, later testified that Parker and his wife were “somewhat friends,” and that Parker had taken their engagement and wedding photos. Their three-year-old daughter was at home when her mother was killed.
In a statement to the court, Simmons-Hancock’s mother, Jessica Brooks, addressed Parker as an “evil piece of flesh demon”.
“My baby was alive still fighting for her babies when you tore her open and ripped her baby from her stomach,” Brooks said.
Taylor Parker family
Parker’s mother’s name is Shonia Prior and her father is Mark Morton.
Parker was married twice – first to Tommy Wacasey with whom she shared two children, and then to Hunter Parker whom she divorced in 2019.
Taylor Parker age
Parker was 29 years old at the time of her sentencing.
Taylor Parker now
In October 2022, Taylor Parker was found guilty of murder. She was sentenced to death by the Bowie County Juror after deliberations that lasted just over an hour.
However, her defence lawyers said Parker was let down by family and friends who did not challenge her about the fake pregnancy.
“There was no safety net when everyone saw the wheels were off,” Jeff Harrelson, for the defence, said.
Therefore, the defence said it would appeal the death sentence.
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