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The Gruesome True Story Behind Maternal Instinct

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Wade Griffin‘s mother said she “pretty well knew” that her son’s supposedly pregnant girlfriend Taylor Parker was not actually pregnant.

But when she tried to discuss her concerns with Wade, he didn’t want to hear it, Connie Griffin testified during Parker’s 2022 murder trial.

Still, Connie said, she went to the couple’s gender reveal party to keep the peace, telling the court, “It would have killed him had I not shown up knowing that I had been at his brother’s the week before.“

As it turned out, Parker was faking her pregnancy. And to complete the ruse, prosecutors said, on Oct. 9, 2020, the 27-year-old East Texas woman killed Reagan Simmons-Hancock, who was eight months pregnant, and cut the 21-year-old’s unborn baby from her womb. The premature infant, Braxlynn Sage Hancock, also died.

The new Netflix documentary Maternal Instinct, now streaming, delves into the gruesome case, which resulted in Parker becoming the seventh woman currently on death row in Texas.

“As unimaginable what she did,” Wade says in the doc, “I don’t even know how to explain it.”

Netflix

Parker admitted to investigators that she got into a physical fight with Hancock and cut the unborn baby out of the pregnant woman’s body, but she pleaded not guilty to capital murder and kidnapping. Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty because the murder was premeditated, the crime was heinous and Parker showed no remorse.

Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Andrew Venable testified at trial that Parker’s deceit—she also fabricated a story about her mother preventing her from collecting a $6 million inheritance—was “continuous from the start” of her relationship with Wade “through the end.”

“As one story, one lie, one scheme was presented,” he said, “additional lies had to be created to support that as each started to unravel to corroborate each lie.”

Here is what to know about the haunting story that unfolds in Maternal Instinct:

Netflix

Who Is Taylor Parker?Wade Griffin met Taylor Rene Parker, a divorced mother of two, at a rodeo in the summer of 2019 and they got serious quickly, moving in together that October.She “lit up the room when she walked in,” Griffin, a roofing company supervisor and hog trapper, recalled in the Netflix documentary Maternal Instinct. And while “most girls don’t like the country life,” Parker pulled her weight on the farm.”I thought she was fantastic,” Griffin’s friend Codey Ott said in the doc. “She was somebody that you’d want to hang around with.”Parker was working at a hiring agency when she met Griffin, but—as detailed in the doc and by prosecutors during her 2022 murder trial—she insisted she had a $6 million inheritance waiting for her once some family drama was sorted out.

Netflix

Who Was Reagan Hancock?Jessica Brookes admitted in the doc that she was “disappointed” at first when her daughter Reagan Simmons got pregnant at 17. Stepfather Marcus Brookes, meanwhile, “was furious,” he said, as it could make “starting a life a lot harder.”But, once their granddaughter Kynlee was born, he added, “it was like she was always meant to be a mother. That was her thing.”When Reagan got engaged to her longtime boyfriend Homer Hancock, Jessica hired Parker to take their engagement photos. Parker also ended up photographing the couple’s wedding when they tied the knot Sept. 21, 2019.And when Reagan shared in May 2020 that she was expecting her second child, Jessica said, “we were just over the moon for her and Homer.”Jessica testified during Parker’s trial that she didn’t know of her daughter having much contact with Parker until after the defendant found out Reagan was pregnant and having a girl.

Netflix

When Did Taylor Parker First Say She Was Pregnant?Griffin’s friend Angela Pate said in the doc that Parker first told her she was “convinced” she was pregnant in January 2020. Angela advised her not to tell Griffin until she was sure.”One evening,” Griffin said, “she hits me with, ‘Pretty sure I’m pregnant.'”Parker later told police that he never had any idea she wasn’t expecting and, everything she did later, she acted alone.He also didn’t know until after Parker was arrested that she couldn’t get pregnant.Dr. Christopher Mason of Northeast Texas Women’s Health, who testified at her trial and participated in Maternal Instinct, said that she had a tubal ligation in 2014 to prevent another pregnancy after having two children.And while that was reversible, Mason explained in the doc, she returned with bleeding a year and a half later and doctors found a cyst on her right ovary and “what looked like a visible ectopic pregnancy in the left tube.”The decision was made to do a hysterectomy, he said, meaning she would no longer have a uterus and it would be impossible for her to ever be pregnant again.

Netflix

How Did Taylor Parker Fake Being Pregnant for 10 Months?Parker wore a fake bump and proceeded to take maternity photos, share updates on Facebook, acquire baby paraphernalia and celebrate at a gender reveal party.

Netflix

Did Anyone Suspect That Taylor Parker Was Lying About Being Pregnant?Angela said in the doc that Parker sent her a medical report confirming that she was having a girl, and she forwarded the email to Codey’s wife, Stephanie Ott.Stephanie noticed that the date on the report was Nov. 4, 2016, so, as she said in the doc, she called Parker to see if there was a mistake. Parker said she’d call her doctor, then told Stephanie she was told the lab had misprinted dozens of reports that day—but the gender news was legit.From that day on, Stephanie said, “I knew something was off.”Northeast Texas Women’s Health manager Melissa Mason said in the Netflix doc that staffers saw Parker’s social media updates and were “very confused,” but they were all bound by privacy laws.As Parker’s supposed September due date came and went, the clinic went on high alert. “We really thought that, if anything,” the manager said, “she would just try to steal a baby.”

Netflix

What Happened to Reagan Hancock?Reagan, 21, was almost 35 weeks pregnant when she was killed at her New Boston, Texas, home on the morning of Oct. 9—the day, Griffin told authorities, Parker said she was going to be induced.Reagan’s husband Homer testified that Parker was at their house the night before his wife was killed, calling them “somewhat friends.” Before he went to bed, he said, he could hear them talking about Parker helping decorate their nursery.He went to work early the next morning and, after a text exchange with Reagan that he found unusual, his “I love you” message at 8:33 a.m. went unanswered.Reagan’s mother testified that, after Homer called to relay his concern, she went to their house and found her daughter face-down in the living room, blood everywhere. When emergency responders arrived and turned her over, they saw a cut across her belly.Parker later confessed to Texas Ranger Joshua Mason, per an Oct. 13 probable cause affidavit obtained by KTAL News, that she used a small scalpel to remove Reagan’s unborn baby—a girl named Braxlynn Sage Hancock—from her womb.An autopsy determined Reagan had been beaten, strangled and stabbed repeatedly.

Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation/Facebook

When Was Taylor Parker Arrested?Parker was pulled over by a Texas state trooper at 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 9.She called 911 as the trooper approached her car, as seen in the doc, telling the dispatcher she needed an ambulance because “I started having my baby.”Body cam footage shows the newborn in her lap. The trooper observed that the umbilical cord was attached and Parker was “performing CPR on the baby.”Doctors at the hospital, where Braxlynn was pronounced dead, quickly determined that Parker had not just given birth.She first insisted to Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Chad Dansby that it was her baby, as seen in body cam footage, but Parker soon admitted that she had not been pregnant and had abducted the baby after a physical altercation with Hancock. She was subsequently arrested at the hospital.

Bi-State Detention Center via AP

What Happened at Taylor Parker’s Murder Trial?Parker admitted to having a bloody fight with Reagan and cutting her baby from her womb, but pleaded not guilty to charges of capital murder and kidnapping.More than 140 witnesses testified over 26 days of testimony during a nearly two-month trial that began in September 2022. Parker’s attorney Jeff Harrelson did not call any witnesses until the penalty phase.Rather, he urged the jury during closing arguments Oct. 3 to find Parker guilty of murder—rather than capital murder—based on the letter of the law, “even if you don’t like it.”As for the other charge, Harrelson advised, “It’s our position that you can’t kidnap someone unless you’ve been born and alive.”First Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kelley Crisp countered in her rebuttal, “The child was born when Taylor Parker cut her out. That’s when she was born. So what Taylor Parker decided wasn’t her decision to make, but she did. She decided when she was born, and she also decided when Reagan was gonna die.”The jury deliberated for less than an hour before finding Parker guilty of capital murder. She was sentenced to death on Nov. 9.Judge John Tidwell offered no additional comment during sentencing, instructing deputies, “You can remove her and take her to death row.”

Texas Department of Criminal Justice

Where is Taylor Parker Now?Parker, now 33, became the seventh woman on death row in Texas, located in the maximum-security Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit at the Gatesville correctional complex.None of the women have received an execution date.In 2025, an appeals court denied Parker’s petition to have her conviction for kidnapping overturned, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a plea to review her death penalty conviction in May.

Netflix

Where Is Wade Griffin Now After Taylor Parker’s Murder Conviction?Griffin returned to hog trapping and tending to his farm.”The whole point behind it all,” he said in the doc, “I really don’t know. I guess she was hoping one day I’d finally tell her I loved her, but I never did.”Connie said some people in town “turn and walk the other way” when they see her son, but, as seen in the doc, he did reconnect with friends he’d become estranged with when they confronted him with their suspicions about Parker.

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