Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - SPECIAL WEEKEND CRIME STORIES UPDATE: The Verdict is in! Pregnant Mom, 21, Sliced Open To Get Baby.
Episode Date: October 8, 2022The verdict is in the murder of 21-year-old Regan Simmons Hancock, found by her mother lying face down in her bloody living room. Hancock nearly 8 months pregnant with her second child, has a larg...e slice across her stomach and the baby is gone. On a nearby roadway, a Texas State Trooper pulls over a car for speeding, and inside he finds Taylor Parker giving CPR to a newborn. Parker tells the trooper that she gave birth on the side of the road, but the baby isn't breathing. Parker and the newborn are rushed to a hospital, where the baby died. It's also where Parker, who had seemingly just given birth, refused to be checked out by doctors. Now, Parker knows her fate. Joining Nancy Grace Today: Dale Carson - High Profile Attorney (Jacksonville), Former FBI Agent, Former Police Officer (Miami-Dade County), Author: "Arrest-Proof Yourself, DaleCarsonLaw.com Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst (Beverly Hills, CA), DrBethanyMarshall.com, New Netflix show: 'Bling Empire' (Beverly Hills) Dr. Michelle DuPre - Former Forensic Pathologist, Medical Examiner and Detective: Lexington County Sheriff's Department, Author: "Homicide Investigation Field Guide" & "Investigating Child Abuse Field Guide", Forensic Consultant, DMichelleDupreMD.com Sheryl McCollum - Forensic Expert, Founder: Cold Case Investigative Research Institute in Atlanta, GA, ColdCaseCrimes.org, @ColdCaseTips Jax Miller - News Writer, Oxygen.com, True Crime Author, Author: "Hell in The Heartland: Murder, Meth, and The Case of Two Missing Girls", Facebook: "RealJaxMiller", Twitter/Instagram: @RealJaxMiller See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
A gorgeous young mom-to-be found murdered.
Her unborn baby, gone. How can that be? The mommy's found murdered.
The unborn baby is missing because the baby has been surgically cut from mommy's stomach.
It sounds like a sci-fi novel, a horror story, but it's not. I'm Nancy Grace. This is
Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. In the last hours,
a stunning development in the case of the so-called Texas Womb Raider. This woman, Taylor Parker, age 29, old enough to know better,
has been convicted in the murder of her pregnant friend, Reagan Simmons Hancock.
Reagan stabbed 100 times by her so-called friend attempting to steal her unborn baby, Praxland Sage.
Well, this jury got it right, but where did it all start?
Police are investigating after a woman was found dead in her home
after her unborn child was removed from her womb Friday morning.
Police in New Boston, which is about 24 miles west of Texarkana,
say they responded around 10.20 in the morning.
The woman was found dead inside the home.
Right now, details are limited, but the New Boston Police Department and Texas Rangers are investigating.
Jess Brooks makes a 911 call to Texas police around 10.20 on a Friday morning in October.
Brooks has just found her daughter, Regan Simmons Hancock, lying face down in her bloody living room.
According to police, there is blood throughout the house, on the floor, furniture, walls, appliances, and other items.
Hancock is found with a large cut across her abdomen.
21-year-old Hancock is nearly eight months pregnant with her second child, but the child is gone.
Hancock's three-year-old daughter, however, has been left alone with her dying mother.
You were just hearing our friends at CBS 11 in Dallas-Fort Worth and our friends at CrimeOnline.com who jogged my memory. I forgot that little tidbit. The three-year-old daughter is left in the home with dead mommy mommy's tummy cut open and the baby
gone with me an all-star panel to make sense of what we know right now first of all to jacks
miller writer with oxygen.com true crime author one book Hell in the Heartland, Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls.
Okay, with that said, Jax Miller, I'm thinking about Reagan, Simmons, Hancock.
This takes place in New Boston, Texas.
What can you tell me about New Boston, Texas?
Well, New Boston's kind of like your typical eastern Texas town.
There's Chili, there's Rodeo, there's Jesus.
It's everything.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Wait, wait.
Wait a minute.
No offense to anybody talking or listening, but I, for one, do not want to hear Jesus Christ thrown in with Rodeo and Chili's restaurant.
Okay?
Not kidding.
So let's just back it up. Okay, I'm sorry. Tell me about
New Boston, Texas. So it's this town in eastern Texas. It's about 5,000 people. Oh, sorry,
Jackson. I'm actually really not trying to give you a hard time. It just sounds that way.
What do you mean it's a typical east Texas town? I mean, I've been to Texas, but I certainly have not been all over Texas.
That would take a long time.
What's a typical eastern Texas town?
I was just basing it on my own experience driving through eastern Texas.
You know, New Boston is a town with rodeos and chili cook-offs and farmer markets.
It's about 5,000 people.
That sounds pretty good to me.
Yeah. I love
a good rodeo and I love a good chili
cook-off. That's one of the reasons I belong
to my little United Methodist Church is we have
chili cook-offs all the time.
So, what's the
population? I mean,
I'm sorry, you just said about 5,000.
So, this is a small town. I'm asking for
a reason. I'm not just giving you a hard time.
Cheryl McCollum, joining me, forensics expert, founder of Cold Case Research Institute.
You can find her at coldcasecrimes.org.
This is not a cold case.
But Cheryl and I go way back.
We have differing accounts of how we first met.
She claims it was at 3 a.m., not at a Barbadette crime scene.
Cheryl McCollum, the reason I'm grilling Jax Miller on where the incident happened,
we're talking about a young pregnant mom dead with her stomach sliced open, is because the smaller
the population, the easier it should be, logically speaking, to find the perp. Explain.
Well, your suspect pool is going to be very small. If you've only got 5,000 people and half are
women, you're already down to only 2,500 people. And then you've got to take the age, you know,
80 and above and, you know, maybe 16 and below. You're looking at a very small group of people that might be involved here.
What we're also looking at
is where the home was located.
If it was way out in a rural area
or was it in a neighborhood?
Is that neighborhood known for break-ins
or anything like that?
Or was it a really safe place to be?
How active was she in the community?
Church, work, friends, things of that nature.
So, again, your suspect pool here is going to be very small.
You know what, Cheryl?
Can I jump in about this?
Yes, you can, but I want to give Cheryl, I think the last time she was with us,
I cut her mic not once but twice.
I agree with everything you just said, especially about church and work,
because let's just say she worked at the mall.
I used to work at the mall at Sears. You come in contact with a lot of people and a lot of people see you that you don't realize
are seeing you. And another thing about New Boston that Jax Miller from Oxygen.com was telling us,
yes, it's a small town of 5,000, but how do I know how many people in the metro area come there to go to O'Charlie's and Chili's and Applebee's and the mall or whatever else might be there?
I know in my county seat, Bibb County, Macon, we lived far, far outside of the county seat, which is Macon, out in rural Bibb County,
unincorporated Bibb County. We had a 30-minute drive just to get to McDonald's, so that was few
and far between. But when you take into account there's 5,000 people living in Boston, all around
it, people could be coming in, and depending on where she went to church and where she worked,
and her involvement in the community, like Cheryl McCollum was just saying,
many more people could have seen her and identified her.
And then we've got the Internet on top of that.
Jump in, Dr. Bethany.
Let me intro you, Bethany.
Dr. Bethany Marshall joining us.
Renowned psychoanalyst joining us out of L.A.
You can find her at drbethanymarshall.com.
She's a star in the new Netflix show, Bling Empire.
Hit me.
Hey, Nancy, you already stole my thunder.
I was about to mention the internet.
This is a 21-year-old mom.
And so we have to include in the suspect pool her internet presence.
Did she have Facebook?
Did she have Instagram?
Did she have Twitter?
And what were her relationships outside of that small community?
I know a lot of young people who grew up in small communities are desperate to have a broader reach.
They want to know about the big cities. They want to know about celebrity life.
They want to know who lives in other counties. And so we don't know.
Was she married? Was she single? Was she dating?
Was she dating somebody online?
Had she met somebody online?
So these are other factors we would want to look at.
You know, you said that if you work like in a Charlie's or a Sears, that other people might come in and know you.
It's O'Charlie's.
O'Charlie's.
Okay, hey.
Oh, I'm going to just put you and Jax Miller in the same pot and let you stew.
Okay.
Miss Jesus rodeo and chilies.
Yeah, I'm on you.
I am on you like a cheap suit, girl.
The two of you.
We do not have O'Charlie's in Southern California.
O'Charlie's.
Well, if you have never been to an O'Charlie's, you're missing the best yeast rolls ever made.
So what were you saying about O'Charlie's?
Well, what I was saying about O'Charlie's is that it is a good point that if you work in an establishment like that, if you hang out there, people might come in and know you and recognize you, but you do not remember them.
But sometimes it's the same with the Internet. If you're accepting every single friend request, if you put your photos and your videos out there,
a lot of people may have become attached to her where she had no relationship with them.
Okay.
You know, Dr. Bethany, when you were talking about the Internet, you mentioned Facebook.
You mentioned Insta.
I think you did.
I know you mentioned Twitter.
But you know what you didn't mention
be real be real be real see i get all my internet knowledge from my 14 year old twins that's the new
thing be real okay it's you you take a quick video or picture of yourself and supposedly without any
hair and makeup in real life and you post it.
You got to get on that, Dr. Bethany.
You know, Dale Carson joined me, high profile lawyer out of Jacksonville and former fed
with the FBI, author of Arrest Proof Yourself.
You can find him at DaleCarsonLaw.com.
Dale, what we're doing right now, it reminds me so much of my years as a prosecutor.
I like to go up to the appellate division where the brain trust was.
I actually got to write appeals for many years as well and talk at lunch or that always be sitting around at a big long table and in the DA's office we had our own set of you know OCGA
official code of Georgia annotated the Georgia Supreme Court's Southeastern case law the Georgia
appellate court rulings so they could do their research sitting right there instead of going to
the law library I would love going up there and getting into it with them about whatever case I was getting ready when I had time.
What we're doing right now, talking about the area, the Oh Charlies, the Chili's, where she worked, where she went to school, the crime rate, the location, all that matters.
It's not just idle chit chat.
It's how you work a case, if you got any brains anyway.
But the most important thing we're all kind of missing,
and that is that a child is missing.
And there's only, in my book, there's only one way this actually happens.
And as an agent and as a police officer,'ve handled cases just like this and it can only
mean one thing somebody wanted that child they didn't necessarily care whether the mother died
or not they wanted the child that's the trail you have to follow hey um dale carson everybody
jump in also with me dr michelleree, pathologist, medical examiner,
and author of Homicide Investigation Field Guide. Everybody jump in. I remember sitting out in the,
it's like a church in a courtroom sometimes. You've got all the state's witnesses and state
supporters, victims' family supporters on one side, and all the defendants, family and supporters on
the other side, and the press somewhere in the mix. Like in a church at a wedding, the bride's
side is on one side and the groom's relatives are on the other side. I will never forget in the Scott
Peterson trial when Mark Garagos blurted something out about maybe Lacey was kidnapped by a woman who wanted to cut open
her stomach and steal baby Connor. I nearly fell off my chair. I got a really mean look from the
sheriff too. She was just dying to throw somebody out of the courtroom. I remember thinking how
far-fetched that was and actually it's highly statistically unlikely and of course
Connor was found with Lacey in a 24-hour cycle when they washed up on the San Francisco Bay shore
so that didn't happen in that case but Garagos was not half wrong right I got to give the devil
his due because we are seeing this more and more
and more where a mother is actually murdered and sliced open to get the baby. Take a listen to our
friends at KTAL. New evidence suggests the victim was not killed the way investigators originally
believed. Originally, 21-year-old Reagan Simmons Hancock was believed
to have died from massive blood loss due to slashing and cutting. A scalpel was later
recovered from her neck during an autopsy. According to an examiner hired by the state,
Hancock died from being strangled rather than being cut. Okay, hold on. Straight out to Jax
Miller, our special guest joining us from Oxygen.com. She's a true crime author.
Jax, you see a mom lying on the floor with her dead,
covered, the whole area covered in blood at the crime scene.
Her three-year-old little girl sitting with mommy, God knows how long,
and her baby having been cut out of her stomach. Then we are just learning a scalpel was later recovered from her neck during an autopsy.
I mean, I would have thought the scalpel would be used to cut her tummy open,
but her neck was sliced as well.
It's really a horrific, horrific crime.
There's blood everywhere.
Now they're saying that she was strangled.
You know, she had the scalpel in her neck.
And, you know, just to put it a little bit in context here, we have a killer who's out there.
But remember, New Boston's very close to three state borders.
It's not far from Oklahoma.
It's not far from Arkansas.
And it's not far from Oklahoma. It's not far from Arkansas. And it's not far from Louisiana. So that's another thing to consider, too, that whoever did this might be out of the state by now. Okay, Jax Miller just changed the whole equation right there. When you were talking about eastern Texas, before I got off on my chili rant, I wasn't thinking about the significance of what you just said.
I mean, to me, East Texas, Texas is so big, I didn't realize how close to the border it
was to three states.
And you know, at no fault of theirs, police normally don't, like the Texas police are
going to be looking, they're not going to call Arkansas and Oklahoma and go, hey, this
just happened. The cross-border communication between law enforcement is not great through no fault of
their own. And I can't stress that enough. Cheryl, jump in on that. Nancy, here's the thing that
just leaps out at me more than anything else. And that's when law enforcement in their affidavit put their blood on the floor, furniture,
walls, and appliances. The word appliance, nobody's going to keep their toaster in the living room,
which is where the victim was found. That means this either started in the kitchen or another room
and went throughout the house. She was stabbed over a hundred times. The baby was cut out of her.
A hammer was used to bludgeon her head. Any one of these things, the scapel in the neck,
the hammer bludgeoned her head, the hundred stab wounds, the baby being cut from her,
any of those things would have killed her. This was not a quick, clean, easy, I'm going to knock her out, cut the baby, and I'm out.
You know what, Cheryl, the way you just described that, really, I'm just thinking, Cheryl,
remember when I was pregnant, remember, you threw me that big baby shower in Atlanta,
and there at the end, I mean, I could barely walk.
I didn't realize what, because I couldn't breathe.
I didn't realize what bad shape I was with all those blood clots.
And I'm just thinking of this mom.
She's eight months pregnant.
Describe that scene one more time, Cheryl McCollum.
Blood was on the floor, furniture, walls, and appliances.
So there was blood throughout the house.
So that tells you with like cast-off patterns,
maybe chasing her with a weapon that already had blood on it.
It paints a very sinister picture because, again, this was not fast.
This was a horrific scene.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
100 stab wounds, a scalpel still in the victim's neck, removed atsy and now we find out all the stabs are not even the cod cause of death dr michelle dupree joining me pathologist medical examiner
author of homicide investigation field guide okay dr dupree, jump in. This was absolutely overkill.
I mean, there's just no other way to explain it.
Three different types of manners or causes of death, you know, strangulation, the bludgeoning with the hammer, and the hundred stab wounds.
This was crazy.
This was frenetic.
This was just absolutely overkill.
And you know what else is interesting to you, Dr. Bethany Marshall,
psychoanalyst joining us out of L.A.,
now that I hear
Dr. Michelle Dupree and
Cheryl McCollum
describing the crime scene
and Jax as
well from Oxygen,
there's no way this little girl,
the three-year-old, didn't see probably
the whole thing.
Mommy running from room to room, screaming, blood in the back, blood in the kitchen, on the appliances, blood on furniture, in the floor.
Nancy, I had kind of like a fantasy or a daydream or a guess, hypothesis, whatever the right word is, about how this happened. Whoever killed this poor 21 year old pregnant mom with little three year old
and ran after her from room to room must have been romancing this mother in
some way.
I don't mean in a sexual romantic way,
but I mean,
must have befriended her,
must have come to the front door with an agenda,
sat down,
had tea, had coffee,
whatever, was chatting with her.
And whoever did this was either extraordinarily angry or was an amateur and was just desperate
for any way to kill this mom and get access to the fetus.
So when you think of chasing her from room to room, the scalpel in the neck, over 100 stab marks,
this was a crime that was pre-planned from the standpoint that the perpetrator wanted to kill the mother and gain access to the baby.
But this person, the perpetrator, did not know how to kill a human being.
The perpetrator tried one thing,
then tried another, and then another.
This poor pregnant woman is running from room to room.
This is a late-stage pregnancy,
and the perpetrator is just, you know,
thinking about one way to kill her,
and when that doesn't work, she thinks about another way,
you know, grabbing appliances,
throwing her against the wall, stabbing her.
Not only is it brutal, but it does, Dr. Dupree is right, the word frenetic, overkill, ill-strategized, amateur.
It has a very crazy quality.
I think more of a frenzy, of a frenzy.
That's what I'm thinking about.
Guys, you know, we need to jump in. It's a disorganized killer.
And disorganized killers are not organized.
They don't plan things.
The only thing that happened here is they've gotten away.
That's the one thing that's happened.
And if you're going to take a child from a mother's womb, you want to keep the mother alive as long as you can to secure
the life of the child. And that did not happen here because as you point out, anger and hostility
was at a maximum level when this event transpired. I got to jump in. Okay. It does appear amateurish
to me because again, this killer left behind weapons, left
behind the victim's body and left behind a witness. A three-year-old can give a lot of information.
Furthermore, whoever did this had to have some pre-planning. You're going to show up somewhere
with a newborn. There's a backstory. So there was premeditation. You're absolutely right.
It's still disorganized.
And disorganized means that very thing, that they leave evidence,
that there may be preplanning, but the actual course of that,
there's disorganization, which is clearly evident from the scene
that we hear about.
Guys, when you are analyzing a case and you're trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
The main piece of the puzzle is not necessarily the crime scene,
but it's the victim.
That is the main piece of your puzzle.
Take a listen to our friends at KSLA.
The 21-year-old was wife to Homer Hancock
and mom to 3-year-old Kenley Grace,
and she was also expecting another baby girl, who she'd named Braxlyn Sage.
She became a mother early, but after she had Kenley, she went on to get her high school diploma,
and she was aspiring to eventually get in.
She was going to start taking classes again in the spring, and she wanted to go into nursing eventually.
Never quit smiling, never quit trying and moving on and tackling the next hurdle.
The most beautiful person, her spirit, her personality, everything about her was beautiful.
A piece of us is gone now.
Emily Simmons says her sister Reagan is the glue that keeps her family together.
She always held us close.
And she's holding us closer now.
For now, the family is leaning on their faith.
Just prayers.
All we can ask for is prayer.
Everywhere I look, I see her. Our friends at KSLA speaking to family members in their grief.
And, you know, Dr. Bethany, it's not just grief.
It's not just suddenly losing someone so young.
You know, Dr. Bethany, you've got to hand it to this lady victim, Reagan.
She has a baby.
She chooses to keep the baby.
She's a teen mom.
And she goes, after having the baby,
goes back and finishes
her high school degree
and then is
starting nursing classes
in the spring.
I mean, this woman
is amazing.
Nancy, she's remarkable.
And in terms of the family and the aftermath of this tragedy, you know, one of the definitions of trauma is when the unimaginable happens.
As much as we're talking about this and trying to make sense of it, it's still the unimaginable.
There's no way for this family to process. And as I said so many times on your show, grieving is not just recognizing the loss of the present and the past. It's realizing that you'll never have a future with this person. They'll never see her mother, the unborn baby, raise her three-year-old, go on to become a professional nurse. They'll never see her get married. They'll never see her graduation. So they have to come to terms with the future.
And you know, Nancy, this perpetrator
not only stole the life of a mother and an unborn baby,
think of all the patience that this young mother
was going to help as a nurse.
She's robbed society of a very important person as well.
So the search is on police make public
the name of the victim in the community is in shock and a reeling women are afraid no one knows
how to make sense of it hey does anybody on this panel of course you do remember the timothy mcveigh case, the OK City bomber. He murdered
volumes of people.
Remember, it was in the Alfred
Murrah building in Oklahoma
City, and there was a nursery
in that building,
by the way, that he bombed.
And, Cheryl, do you
remember the coincidence
of how he
was caught? Do you of how he was caught?
Do you remember how he was caught?
Please say no.
I do.
I believe.
Oh, I can never stump you, woman.
Go ahead.
I believe it was a traffic stop.
Yes, it was.
Tail light.
Tail light.
Tail light.
You know how tail lights are made up of like five, seven, eight little pieces of red and one of those little pieces was out and they pulled him over and they found all sorts of evidence of the bombing. So the search is on for the killer
of this young mom, Reagan Simmons Hancock, just 21 years old. And then what a co-inky dink, a coincidence. Take a listen to
our friends at Crime Online. A Texas state trooper pulls over a car for speeding and inside he finds
Taylor Parker giving CPR to a newborn. Parker tells the trooper that she has just given birth
on the side of the road, but the baby isn't breathing. The trooper says he could see an umbilical cord
connected to the infant coming out of the woman's pants. Parker and the newborn are rushed by Life
Net EMS to McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma, where the baby dies. And it's also where
Parker, who has seemingly just given birth, refuses to be checked out by doctors. Let's analyze what
we just heard from our friends at Crime Online.
Texas State Trooper pulls over a vehicle for speeding, finds a woman, 29-year-old Taylor
Parker, giving CPR to an infant.
She says she just gave birth on the side of the road, but the baby's not breathing. The trooper could see the umbilical cord still connected to the infant coming out of Parker's pants.
Okay, wait, wait.
I'm taking all this in.
Rush her to the hospital where she refuses to be examined by doctors.
Jax Miller joining me, investigative reporter with Oxygen.com and true crime author.
Tell me about the trooper pulling over this woman.
What do we know?
So this happened in DeKalb, Texas.
And, you know, it's like you said, she was speeding.
And it was around that same time, like within minutes
that the victim's mother
had called police saying, I just found my daughter
she's dead, there's blood everywhere
and then this is kind of happening
simultaneously and
pretty much Taylor
has the baby on her lap
she's like, my baby's not breathing, I just
gave birth on the side of the road and she went as far
as to put the baby's or the mother's placenta down her pants.
Okay, whoa.
Stop.
Repeat very slowly for us.
Chili eating, O'Charlie loving bunch.
What did you just say about the placenta?
So when the state trooper found Taylor with the baby on her lap, she says, I just gave birth.
And of course, we now know that Taylor had stuffed the mother's placenta, Reagan's placenta, down her trousers to keep up with appearances.
Okay. You know, believe it or not, Dr. Michelle Dupree, a lot of people don't know what a placenta is. Explain.
The placenta is actually what nourishes and feeds the baby. It's attached to the inside of the mother's uterus and, of course, attached by umbilical cord to the fetus. And that's
what delivers blood and everything, all the nourishment.
What does it look like?
It looks like a disc, probably about 12 or so inches in diameter.
It's maybe an inch or inch and a half thick, and it's sort of spongy.
And it's spongy because it's full of blood.
This would be very messy, very, very, very messy.
Where is it inside the womb?
So inside the womb, it is inside the uterus, and it is attached usually to the posterior wall of the uterus itself.
And the umbilical cord connects to it or through it?
It connects to it.
So one end of the umbilical cord is connected to the baby.
One end of the umbilical cord is connected to the placenta.
And the placenta is attached on the other side to the posterior wall of the uterus.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace And Jax Miller from
Oxygen.com, you're telling me basically
a bloody blanket, the placenta, is stuffed down Taylor Parker's pants?
That's correct.
The state trooper noted that the umbilical cord was still in her trousers and, of course, that it would still be attached to the placenta, you know, which would be natural if this was her child.
You know, you deliver you deliver baby you deliver the
placenta soon after um but then they took her to the hospital via ambulance and she refused to have
a an examination dr bethany marshall psychoanalyst beverly hills don't tune up about insanity
don't because this woman had the cunning to try to trick the state trooper by shoving the umbilical cord and the placenta down her own pants.
Another woman's child's umbilical cord and placenta to pull off her lie, stuffed it down her own pants.
But Nancy, isn't this what we see in all criminals?
They don't see in themselves what we see in them. I mean, she's not psychiatrically ill. She's not mentally ill, but she doesn't think that she'll be subjected to an examination she cuts the baby
out of the 21 year old mother's body with a scalpel I believe or a knife some sort of instrument
but she doesn't think she's actually harming the baby not only the physical harm but the
psychological harm of that kind of a traumatic birth I I mean, this is a mother who really, I mean, I'm sorry, I said mother.
I mean, a potential mother.
This is somebody who wants to be a mother so badly
that she has this tunneling effect
that all she can think of is getting access to the baby,
but she's not thinking about any other factor
in terms of the medical aspect, the biological aspects, the survival of the infant.
Can you imagine her being a mother in real life?
What a disaster.
Actually, she had children.
Believe it or not.
This woman had children.
She knows what it's like to be pregnant.
So what more?
And I'm glad you brought that up, Bethany, because this is a whole nother layer of subterfuge.
And to me, it makes her even more evil because she knows what the victim was going through in the pregnancy.
She had children.
So why?
Why this?
Why another child?
Does she need another child so desperately?
Why a baby? Why murder to get a baby?
Well, take a listen to our friends at KSLA.
Attorneys said Parker committed the crimes not because she wanted a baby,
but because she did not want to lose her boyfriend.
Parker was not able to carry a child because of a hysterectomy.
Parker offered them $100,000 to be a surrogate mother.
Parker ordered from the internet a suit which made her look pregnant,
faking that condition for nearly 10 months,
all the while hunting for a victim.
Okay, I've got to let that soak in,
let that percolate for a moment.
She did not want to lose her boyfriend,
did not tell him she had had a hysterectomy,
offered friends $100,000
to be a surrogate mother,
and ordered an internet pregnancy suit.
All the while hunting for a victim.
Well, number one, I guess she's lost her boyfriend now.
But Cheryl McCollum, can you imagine a 10 month search for just the right pregnant victim?
Nancy, I'm going to go back to what I started a little while ago.
And that's this premeditation.
This person had to lie about being pregnant.
So did she have a fake pregnancy test?
Did she make fake doctor's appointments?
And what extent did she go to?
Again, Dr. Marshall mentioned social media.
She took to social media.
Did she gain weight?
The thing you just played said that she had one of those fake baby bumps.
Oh, there's so much more, Cheryl.
Jax Miller joining me from Oxygen.com.
Isn't it true she is accused of faking ultrasounds and even having a gender reveal party?
It was nuts.
She went to such great lengths.
She had this big gender reveal.
Everything you just said.
And then beyond that, on the day that she went to the hospital with this baby, she had her boyfriend.
He was supposed to come because she said, oh, I'm going to be induced into labor.
So he was going to the hospital thinking that she was going to deliver a baby.
Can't he add?
Didn't he know she's been pregnant for 10 months?
Well, I guess he had believed that.
And on top of that, she allegedly was going to,
she had plans to do this bomb threat at the hospital.
And I guess that was a way to kind of keep up, you know, with concealing this big secret.
Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait.
What?
Bomb threat?
Yes, there was a bomb threat.
That was just released.
She was going to make a bomb threat to keep this big baby thing a secret, allegedly.
I mean, when you look at her her i'm looking at her facebook photo
she just she's gorgeous she's just okay the evil that can lurk in the mind of a human is amazing
to me guys take a listen what more we know about her plotting and scheming take a listen to our
cut 14 our friends from k. One friend testified about how
Parker was obsessed with her pregnancy. This afternoon, the prosecution showed numerous posts
on Parker's Facebook page where she claimed to be pregnant and shared pictures of a baby bump
in a gender reveal party. The jury also saw evidence in her testimony showing Parker was Facebook friends with the victim.
Aha, there's a connection.
Taylor Parker became Facebook friends with the pregnant mom, Reagan Simmons Hancock,
and more from KTAL Listen.
Data from her devices and internet searches showed she ordered a fake baby belly
in a customized fake ultrasound scan online
and posted dozens of baby belly photos and selfies.
She stalked OB clinics in East Texas and Shreveport.
One investigator said she was looking for places where she could find pregnant women
and even looked up license plates of patients coming out of clinics.
As her fake due date grew closer,
she also searched online for information on
private adoptions and out-of-hospital birth certificates. In the days before the murder,
she watched videos about how to do a c-section, examine a newborn, and search for where Reagan
Simmons lived. In the hours before the murder, cell phone data showed Parker used a spoofed
cell phone number to contact Reagan Hancock.
Okay, Dale Carson, high-profile lawyer out of Jacksonville and former FBI agent.
That's a lot of evidence, Dale Carson.
Oh, it is.
And it also demonstrates that they were active on the Internet.
So that means that the use of cell phone data,
the use of other mechanisms to establish where people were at a certain time is going to be of immense value to the investigation. involving a similar matter where a fellow was believed that his girlfriend, who actually did what we're talking about here, essentially, was in fact didn't know. I mean, boys don't calculate
like women do when it comes to those months. So you're just, you really don't know and you don't
understand. So these men typically know nothing
about what's really going on and typically they don't get charged in these kinds of cases how
this guy didn't notice that that was a fake pregnancy bump she ordered probably on amazon
jump in dr bethany sadly these cases which you said earlier in the show are statistically rare
often follow a common pattern.
You usually have a woman who sometimes she has children,
sometimes she doesn't, who needs a love object,
wants to hold on to the love of the man.
She imagines that if she says she's going to have a baby,
she'll have a better chance of securing his love.
So what we see is there's a nine or 10 or 11 month pattern of
getting fake sonograms, going on the internet, ordering baby bums, having the gender reveal
party, having baby showers, and all of a sudden at the ninth month, they have to produce a baby.
And they become extremely desperate, aggressive, ruthless, and they'll do anything to procure a baby, even
like what we're covering today, you know, murdering and attacking a pregnant woman.
What a piece of work. 29-year-old Taylor Parker doesn't want to tell her boyfriend
she had a hysterectomy and instead fakes a pregnancy for 10 months. Can nobody add but me and I'm not that good at it.
10 months.
She fakes a pregnancy online and to those closest to her, including her boyfriend.
I don't know how he didn't notice she's not pregnant.
Before she murders her best friend, slashing her hip to hip with a scalpel,
all to steal her unborn baby girl and present the baby to her
boyfriend. Just convicted, now heading toward penalty phase. She is facing the death penalty.
She's been convicted of capital murder. The guilty verdict is in, but what about punishment? Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off.
Goodbye, friends.
This is an iHeart Podcast.