The terrifying 2020 case has now been turned into a film.
Includes spoilers.
If you can cast your mind back six years, you might recall headlines about a young woman in Texas who became the centre of a gruesome murder case when she fabricated her pregnancy and abducted an unborn child from the womb of her friend.
That was the story of Taylor Parker, who is the centre of a new Netflix documentary film, Maternal Instinct, which uses real footage with Parker’s former friends and boyfriend, Wade Griffin, to explore what happened behind the scenes leading up to the tragic event.
A summary of the film reads: ‘In a small East Texas town, a young woman from a wealthy family falls for a local hog trapper. Their relationship appears perfect, and within months, she’s pregnant and proudly showing off her baby bump all over social media. But when a state trooper pulls her over and discovers she has just given birth in her car, her story quickly falls apart, exposing the truth behind a terrifying and unthinkable crime.’
Who is Taylor Parker?
Taylor Rene Parker lived in East Texas and met her boyfriend and local hog trapper, Wade Griffin, at a rodeo in 2019. Parker said to Griffin that she was linked to a wealthy family, a claim which later transpired to be untrue.
Parker, who had undergone a hysterectomy in 2019 and technically could not get pregnant, told Griffin that she was expecting a baby. She consequently spent months spinning an elaborate web of lies – including collecting baby clothes and hosting a gender reveal party – to convince him and their wider circle that the pregnancy was real.
Fast forward to October 2020 and Parker was pulled over by police officers for erratic driving. They found her covered in dried blood and holding a dead baby – Parker claimed to officers that she had given birth on the side of the road, but after checks at a hospital nearby, doctors said that there was no evidence of recent childbirth.
Netflix
It transpired that Parker had earlier killed 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock in a brutal attack. Parker knew Simmons-Hancock and, according to The Guardian, had ‘befriended [her] while photographing her engagement and wedding’.
In the attack, Parker cut open Simmons-Hancock’s abdomen to remove her 35 week-old unborn baby to ‘take as her own’, using a scalpel. The baby’s umbilical cord was still attached when it was discovered by officers in the aftermath.
What happened to Taylor Parker?
Prosecutors argued that Parker had faked her pregnancy and committed the crime to ‘keep her boyfriend’. In October 2022, she was convicted of capital murder, and a month later, sentenced to death.
Parker is now 34 and is one of only seven women on Texas’s death row. Last month, the US Supreme Court declined to review Parker’s case despite her lawyers claiming that she did not receive a fair trial.
How can I watch Maternal Instinct?
Maternal Instinct is available to stream globally on Netflix now.