Warning: This article contains discussion of themes which some readers may find distressing.
Court records have laid bare disturbing details of Taylor Parker’s crimes that were not included in Netflix’s Maternal Instinct.
Released on Friday, June 12, Maternal Instinct examines the 2020 killing of 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock by Taylor Parker, then 27, who also took Reagan’s unborn daughter, Braxlynn, from her womb.
Parker was later sentenced to death and remains on Texas death row. As of June 2026, Texas has seven women on death row, and Parker is the only one from Bowie County.
The documentary charts the period before the killing, including Parker’s months-long deception in which she pretended to be pregnant in front of relatives and friends.
In the years since the killing, Parker’s case has continued to move through the courts. In 2025, Texas’s highest criminal court upheld her capital murder conviction and death sentence, leaving her punishment in place while she remains housed at the O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville.
During the trial, the court found that the attack had been carefully planned and that Parker had spent months trying to find a baby she could pass off as her own.
However, the case files contain additional details that were omitted from the documentary.
According to the documents, Reagan suffered 113 ‘sharp force injuries’.
Testifying in court, medical examiner Dr. Melinda Flores said those injuries included 15 stab wounds and 98 incised wounds, along with 39 ‘blunt force injuries primarily to her face and head’. She also detailed a broken nose, five skull fractures, and two wounds to the jugular vein.
Flores said a number of the injuries extended “all the way to the bone”.
Crime scene technician Marc Sullivan told jurors that Reagan was assaulted in multiple locations throughout her home.
He said the evidence suggested she remained on her feet and moved around while bleeding before eventually collapsing.
A doctor also told the court that the injuries ‘indicated that she may have been hit in the head by a hammer’, while evidence also pointed to ‘possible strangulation’.
“Reagan lost so much blood in the attack that some of her wounds did not even bleed due to low blood pressure.”
The records also state that Parker made a ‘large incised wound going across her lower abdomen with her uterus coming through it’ in order to take the unborn baby.
After removing the child, Parker also took Reagan’s placenta and severed the umbilical cord.
Police later found Parker after she stopped at a roadside location and called 911, claiming she had just given birth and needed medical help. Investigators quickly determined that the newborn was not hers.
Reagan’s baby, Braxlynn, also died after the attack.
In the documentary trailer, Parker’s former boyfriend, Wade Griffin, said:
“It was unimaginable what she did, I don’t even know how to explain it.”