Maternal Instinct is Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary, directed by Jessica Dimmock, which re-examines Taylor Parker’s fetal abduction crime, where she stabbed 21-year-old expectant mother Reagan Simmons-Hancock to death, removing her unborn daughter from her womb using a scalpel.
Jessica Dimmock discussed Taylor Parker’s barbaric crimes in an interview with Netflix Tudum, revealing how she stabbed Reagan Simmons-Hancock over 100 times before separating her child from her womb. The Maternal Instinct director was shocked at Taylor, a mother of two herself, and her horrific attempt at fetal abduction. Dimmock believes that the severity and barbarity of Parker’s crimes set her apart:
”The length of Taylor’s selfishness and cruelty feels very unique to her, [and] really sets her apart. The idea that you could do this to someone who you’re just casually friends with, and the way in which she did it — there was a barbarity to Reagan being stabbed over 100 times.”
More on this in our story.
Maternal Instinct director breaks down Taylor Parker’s crimes
The seeds of Reagan Simmons-Hancock’s murder were sown in 2019, when Taylor Parker started a relationship with Wade Griffin, a roofer and hog trapper living in northeast Texas. Parker started a relationship with Griffin after luring him with sweet tales of a family inheritance tied to a business, which took a harrowing turn when she revealed that she had gotten pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Parker’s friends and family recalled in Maternal Instinct, she orchestrated fake ultrasounds, a gender reveal party, solo sessions to the clinic (under the guise of COVID restrictions) and used padding to support physical changes. Once Parker realized her time was coming to an end, a chance meeting with Reagan Simmons-Hancock (who had hired her for some photography work) presented a golden opportunity, which eventually led to Hancock’s death.
Breaking down the barbarity of Taylor Parker’s crimes, the director of Maternal Instinct called her ‘selfish’ and ‘cruel’ in an interview with Netflix Tudum. What’s more shocking is that Taylor, who committed such a horrific crime, is a woman and mother herself. Referring to Hancock’s three-year-old daughter, who was later found by the authorities, wrapped in a blanket on the bed, Dimmock said:
”I will never understand why Taylor did this. The idea that she is a mother herself and could do this while Reagan’s three-year-old daughter was at home is a part that I will never be able to get over. Once you become a parent especially, there’s just an internal protection that you feel toward children. I know that I have it; I’m a mom. I will never understand how she could have done that with [Reagan’s] three-year-old there and left her.”
Maternal Instinct: How was Taylor Parker caught?
As Maternal Instinct revealed, Taylor Parker fled the scene with Hancock’s now dead daughter, after stabbing her over 100 times. She was eventually stopped by a state trooper near De Kalb, who questioned her about the dried blood on her hands and the infant in her arms. Continuing her string of lies, Parker maintained that she had just given birth on the roadside and her child was not breathing. After first responders shifted Parker and Hancock’s daughter to a nearby hospital, the medical staff became suspicious after they discovered the deceased infant.
Additionally, as Maternal Instinct revealed, the medical staff found no signs of recent childbirth in Parker, who had undergone a hysterectomy in 2019, after having two kids at a young age. Additional DNA tests confirmed that the infant belonged to Hancock, revealing the scope and barbarity of Parker’s crimes.
As Dimmock revealed in her interview, Parker’s defense tried to argue that she had several psychiatric disorders but the jury found her guilty and sentenced her to a life sentence. Taylor Parker remains on death row in Texas as of 2026.
Maternal Instinct is streaming on Netflix.
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Edited by Aashna