Warning: This article contains discussion of themes which some readers may find distressing.
A new Netflix documentary, Maternal Instinct, revisits the case of Taylor Parker, including the moment her fabricated pregnancy came close to being exposed by a gender reveal document before she murdered her pregnant friend and took her unborn child. The film premiered on Netflix on June 12, 2026.
Parker was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2022 for the killing of Reagan Simmons-Hancock, who was 21 years old and eight months pregnant at the time of her death.
Authorities said Simmons-Hancock suffered more than 100 stab wounds before Parker removed the baby from her womb and later attempted to present the child as her own.
For about nine months, Parker maintained the false pregnancy to those around her, including her then-partner Wade Griffin, who later described what she had done as ‘unimaginable’.
Evidence presented in court showed she had staged hospital appointments, ultrasound images and pregnancy symptoms in the lead-up to the attack. Prosecutors also said she used the deception to keep Griffin from leaving her, and the trial court found the crime had been carefully planned.
The documentary also reveals how Parker’s deception nearly unraveled when one of Griffin’s friends examined a supposed hospital report linked to the baby’s gender reveal.
“Taylor sent me the report that said if it was a boy or a girl. It said ‘Congratulations Taylor Parker, it’s a girl!’
“And I’m looking at this paper really well, and I noticed the date on it – it said 2016.”
Parker reportedly dismissed the discrepancy by blaming it on ‘misprints in the lab’, while continuing to insist she was expecting a girl.
What Griffin and others did not know was that Parker had undergone a hysterectomy in 2019, meaning she could not have become pregnant afterward.
When she was eventually stopped by police for driving erratically on a highway, officers found her holding the dead baby and telling them she had given birth by the roadside.
However, after she was taken to a nearby hospital, medical staff alerted police because they found no indication that she had recently delivered a child.
At trial, Parker’s legal team did not argue that she was innocent. Instead, they tried to spare her from receiving the death penalty, but the court rejected that effort.
Parker’s conviction and death sentence were affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on November 6, 2025. Court records show that a petition for review was then filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2026, and as of June 14, 2026, she remains on Texas death row with no execution date set.