The devastating tragedy is explored in the new Netflix documentary.

Where is Taylor Parker now? Inside the *Maternal Instinct *killer’s life now

The devastating tragedy is explored in the new Netflix documentary.

By Brianna Zigler

June 12, 2026 4:18 p.m. ET

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Reagan Simmons-Hancock; Taylor Parker. Credit:

Facebook; Idabel Police Department

- New Netflix documentary *Maternal Instinct* puts the horrific 2020 murder of Reagan Simmons-Hancock back in the spotlight.

- Taylor Parker had faked a pregnancy for 10 months before killing Simmons-Hancock to take her unborn child.

- Parker is currently awaiting a date of execution on death row.

In October 2020, Texas native Taylor Parker was 10 months late delivering her third child. Though the timeframe was concerning, she’d previously presented official documents verifying her pregnancy and even held a gender reveal party. Her plan was to have the child with her boyfriend, Wade Griffin, whom she’d only been dating for a short time. She wanted to settle down with her new family on a huge property using her vast inheritance.

This was all, unfortunately, a massive web of lies, and it ended in tragedy. Desperate to keep up the absurd ruse and prevent Griffin from leaving her, Parker faked her pregnancy and murdered her friend, Reagan Simmons-Hancock, in an attempt to remove her unborn baby from her womb and pass it off as her own.

How did a series of fibs turn into the murder of a 21-year-old woman and her unborn child? This is what the new Netflix documentary *Maternal Instinct* sets out to dissect. Instead of spending any time on Parker’s POV, the film focuses on the victims of her manipulation and the scars she left them with.

Jessica Dimmock’s documentary, which is now streaming on Netflix, returns to this devastating case through a patchwork of interviews, police body cam footage, and archival photos. Here’s everything we know about where Taylor Parker is today.

Who is Taylor Parker?

Taylor Parker in the hospital in 2020 after lying about giving birth.

According to public records, Taylor Parker was born on December 8, 1992, in Titus County, Tex. However, her early life remains vague.

Parker’s brother, Zachary Morton, did testify in court that they had a fraught childhood. He explained to the judge that their father, Mark Morton, once brought him to a “drug house,” that he exploited them in his divorce from their mother, Shonna Prior, and that he did not always prioritize them.

According to Morton, this pattern of poor parenting was passed on to Parker, who had two children, a son with ex-husband Tommy Wacasey and a daughter from a prior relationship. When she and Wacasey divorced in 2017, she gave up custody of their son willingly and did not pay any child support.

Morton said that while Parker was a good parent for the most part, she, like their father, would put her daughter on the back burner to chase after a romance, which he witnessed when she pursued Griffin.

Parker held jobs at a staffing agency and an OB-GYN clinic, though she would attempt to lie and claim that she had a big inheritance coming her way — that she was a “syrup heiress.” She also lied repeatedly to Wacasey about health issues during their marriage, and to her former friends and coworkers, claiming she had multiple sclerosis, cancer, and suffered a stroke.

In 2014, Parker underwent gastric bypass surgery for weight loss and a tubal ligation that same year, though a subsequent ectopic pregnancy resulted in a medically necessary hysterectomy in 2015, per *KTAL*. Thus, she was unable to bear children.

Though Parker’s aunt, Molly Glass, claimed in court that the gastric bypass surgery and hysterectomy seemed to mark a significant shift in Parker’s personality, her former stepmother told the court that as a young girl Parker had a bad habit of lying to get what she wanted.

What’s the timeline of Parker’s relationship with Wade Griffin?

Wade Griffin in Netflix's 'Maternal Instinct'.

Parker met hog-trapper Wade Griffin in 2019 at a rodeo, and the two began dating shortly after. Theirs was a whirlwind relationship, with Griffin’s mother, Connie, testifying in court that she took note of “red flags” despite Parker generally getting along with her family. This included the fact that Parker didn’t have custody of her son.

“She seemed to want a close relationship. I could not tell if [Griffin] wanted that or was standing back,” Connie said.

Before long, Parker was telling Griffin and his family that she was in the process of securing a $20 million real estate deal, a large ranch for the two of them to settle on. She had even put both her and Griffin’s names on the contract, referring to herself as “Taylor Parker-Griffin” despite the two not being married.

It seemed that she hoped this would change soon, however, when she began claiming that she was pregnant. Griffin knew that she had two children, but did not know about her hysterectomy. Parker began preparing as if they were really having a baby, purchasing clothes and toys, posting about her pregnancy on social media, and having a gender reveal party. Ultimately, she was wearing a pillow under her shirt and eventually purchased a fake silicone belly online for her maternity shoot.

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Connie was suspicious that Parker’s pregnancy was a lie, and as *Maternal Instinct* details, those close to Griffin eventually pieced together the trail of deception through dogged research and contact with Parker’s former friends. However, Griffin stuck by Parker, despite privately feeling some uncertainty himself.  He admits that he never loved her.

Though Griffin’s family were expecting a miscarriage announcement as Parker’s fake due date approached and then passed, Parker continued to hold fast to her lie instead of letting go. In the end, she’d go to increasingly desperate lengths to maintain the scheme.

What happened to Reagan Simmons-Hancock?

Jessica Brookes in 'Maternal Instinct'.

At one point, Parker worked as a wedding photographer. She was hired by Reagan Simmons-Hancock to take her engagement photos with longtime boyfriend Homer Hancock, and then went on to photograph their wedding in September 2019. Sometime after this, Parker befriended Simmons-Hancock.

Still holding onto her pregnancy lie, Parker murdered Simmons-Hancock on the morning of October 9, 2020. At the time, the 21-year-old was 35 weeks pregnant, and Parker had visited her house the night before, according to Homer. Simmons-Hancock was meant to be induced on October 6, but a bomb threat was called into the clinic. This call has since been linked to Parker.

When Homer went to work early the morning of October 9, his “I love you text” to Simmons-Hancock went unanswered, prompting concern. Homer called Simmons-Hancock’s mother, and she visited their home to find her daughter face-down in a pool of her own blood. When emergency responders arrived, they discovered a crude C-section had been performed, and Simmons-Hancock's unborn daughter, Braxlynn, had been removed from her uterus.

Simmons-Hancock had been stabbed 15 times by Parker, strangled, and left to die, while Simmons-Hancock’s three-year-old daughter hid in her bedroom nearby. Later on, state troopers pulled Parker over in her car for erratic driving, where she claimed she had just given birth on the side of the road.

When she and the baby were brought to a hospital, she initially refused to be examined by doctors, raising suspicion. Eventually, she was convinced to let a doctor look at her, and they quickly confirmed she had not given birth. DNA testing then confirmed that Braxlynn, who died shortly after arriving at the hospital, was not Parker’s.

Though she first insisted to authorities that the baby was hers, which you can see via body cam footage in *Maternal Instinct,* she goes on to admit that she’d never been pregnant and had abducted the baby. She was then arrested at the hospital.

A year later, she was indicted on charges of capital murder and kidnapping, to which she pleaded not guilty. During the trial, forensic psychologist Dr. Michael Arambula observed that Parker likely had a borderline personality, falling into the “Cluster B” personality disorders.

A "Cluster B" personality includes narcissism, antisocial personality disorder, and sociopathy.

Where is Taylor Parker now?

Emily Simmons in 'Maternal Instinct'.

In October 2022, Parker was found guilty of capital murder and kidnapping, and she was sentenced to death in November after less than two hours of jury deliberation, as reported by *TXK Today*.

"The circumstances in which Reagan died are horrible and there is no doubt it was torture," Bowie County Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp said during her closing statements, as reported by the *Texarkana Gazette*. "But a mother died fighting for her child. That's how she left the world. A woman who died fighting."

“We are just glad justice has been served, not only for our family, our friends, the prosecution team, our community,” Simmons-Hancock's mother expressed after the verdict, per *KSLA**.* Meanwhile, her sister, Emily Simmons, said, “I’m overwhelmed with happiness it’s over because [Parker] 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.”

Parker, now 33, remains on death row at the maximum security Patrick L. O’Daniel facility in Gatesville, Tex. She is the seventh woman in the state to ever receive the death penalty.

Parker will continue to exhaust all possible appeals of her conviction before a date is set for her execution. In November 2025, Parker appealed her kidnapping conviction, but was denied. In May of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a plea for Parker’s case.

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Where can I watch Maternal Instinct?

You can stream *Maternal Instinct* now on Netflix.

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