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The Shocking True Story Behind 'Maternal Instinct'
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The documentary Maternal Instinct explores the murder of 21-year-old Reagan Simmons Hancock, a pregnant woman who was found dead in New Boston, Texas, with her unborn child stolen in October 2020.
Investigators eventually connected the horrific murder to Taylor Parker, a 27-year-old woman who claimed to be pregnant, who was convicted in 2022 for killing Hancock and is now on death row in Texas.
Where is Taylor Parker now? Update on 'Maternal Instinct' killer
In pictures, Taylor Parker looked like a happy expectant mom with her boyfriend Wade Griffin. The couple, living in New Boston, Texas (about 160 miles northeast of Dallas), hadn't been together long when she told him she was pregnant – their baby girl would be born in September 2020.
It was all a lie. Parker was unable to have children after a hysterectomy, a fact she never told her boyfriend. Nonetheless, she started buying baby clothes. She wore a fake pregnancy belly. She convinced a friend to host a gender reveal party.
Suspicious, Griffin's family watched the calendar as her due date approached. When it passed, Griffin confronted her. Rather than confess, she committed a heinous crime – which landed her on Texas' death row.
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Case of Texas woman on death row over grisly murder back in spotlight
New film revives story of Taylor Parker, convicted in 2022 of cutting unborn daughter from womb of friend she killed
In an America so often saturated with brutal crime stories, it takes special circumstances to truly register shock.
But the story of Taylor Parker, now sitting on a Texas death row after being convicted of murdering her pregnant friend Reagan Simmons-Hancock in 2020 and cutting her unborn daughter Braxlynn from her womb, is horrific in part because it appears almost against nature itself.
Such a terrifying act is also rare. Fetal abductions by maternal evisceration number just 15 in the US from 1987 to 2011, and perhaps 100 worldwide. Until 1973, none had ever been recorded in the US.
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