Netflix’s Maternal Instinct is a new true crime documentary that examines one of the most disturbing murder cases in recent Texas history. Directed by Jessica Dimmock, the film centers on the 2020 killing of Reagan Simmons-Hancock, a 21-year-old pregnant woman in New Boston, Texas, and the web of lies that led to it.
Who is Taylor Parker?
Shortly after arriving in a small East Texas community, Taylor Parker made an impression on everyone around her. She claimed to come from a wealthy family with oil money in the Sulphur River bottoms and said she stood to inherit a fortune from her grandmother, per Netflix’s Tudum. In July 2019, she met Wade Griffin, a local hog trapper, at a rodeo. By October, just three months later, she had moved in with him and told him she was pregnant. What those around her didn’t know was that Parker had undergone a hysterectomy years earlier, making pregnancy biologically impossible, according to Tudum.
How did Taylor Parker fake a pregnancy?
Parker maintained the fiction for months, posting about her baby bump on social media and integrating it into daily life. Because the pregnancy coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, she told Wade he couldn’t accompany her to doctor’s appointments due to restrictions, preventing him from verifying anything firsthand, per Tudum. “She always had a counter,” Wade’s mother Connie says in the documentary. “Everything I presented, she countered it.”
Friends from a previous town described seeing the same pattern before Parker arrived in East Texas. She had previously claimed diagnoses of multiple sclerosis, cancer, a brain tumor, and a stroke, according to Tudum. “After it kept happening and happening and happening over and over, I started being like, ‘Maybe she’s not really sick,’” her former friend Abby Bell says in the documentary.
By the time Parker missed her September 22 due date, court evidence revealed she had been searching online for “order cheap pregnancy silicone belly,” “newborn adoptions,” “how to find a birth mother,” and “video of c-section,” per Time.
Who was Reagan Simmons-Hancock?
Reagan Simmons-Hancock was 21 and from nearby New Boston, Texas. Parker first crossed paths with her in September 2019, when she photographed Reagan’s wedding as part of a photography side business, per Tudum. By October 2020, Reagan was 35 weeks pregnant. The two spent a girls’ day together on Oct. 7. Two days later, Reagan stopped answering her phone. Her mother, Jessica, went to the house and found the garage door open, blood inside, and Reagan’s 3-year-old daughter alone in a back bedroom, hiding under the covers, according to Time.
Did the baby survive?
Reagan’s baby did not survive. The infant was removed from the womb during the attack and was already deceased by the time Parker was pulled over on the highway, per Tudum. Reagan also died at the scene.
How was Taylor Parker caught?
On Oct. 9, 2020, Parker called 911 from a highway outside De Kalb, Texas, claiming she had just given birth and that the baby was not breathing. State troopers arrived to find her performing CPR on a newborn, per Tudum. At the hospital, doctors found no evidence that she had given birth. Back in New Boston, investigators found evidence of a brutal attack at Reagan’s home — she had suffered 15 stab wounds and 98 incised wounds, and her unborn baby had been cut from her womb, according to Time. Parker was arrested at the hospital. “It was unimaginable, what she did,” Wade says in the documentary.
What happened at trial?
Parker was convicted of capital murder in November 2022 and sentenced to death by a Bowie County jury, making her one of the few women on Texas death row, per Time. In 2025, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld her conviction and sentence.
Where is Taylor Parker now?
Parker remains on death row in Texas and continues to pursue her remaining appeals. She is currently the youngest woman on death row in the state, according to Tudum.
Who is in ‘Maternal Instinct’?
Maternal Instinct is a documentary, so there is no traditional cast. The film features interviews with Wade Griffin, his mother Connie, Reagan’s mother Jessica Simmons, and former friends of Parker, including Abby Bell and McKenzie Bright, per Tudum. Maternal Instinct is now streaming on Netflix
Featured image photo credit: Netflix
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