Woman Who Faked Her Pregnancy Then Killed Her Pregnant Friend To Steal Her Baby.

In September, a 29-year-old Texas woman, Taylor Rene Parker was prosecuted in court for allegedly killing her pregnant friend and then removing the child from the victim's womb and trying to pass the baby off as her own.

Parker was arrested in Oklahoma in 2020 and pled not guilty to first-degree murder and kidnapping after Reagan Simmons Hancock, 21, was found dead in her New Boston home at 10:20 a.m. on Oct. 9, 2020, after police received a 911 call.

Simmons Hancock was around seven and a half months pregnant when she was killed by Taylor.

After the alleged incident, a Texas State Trooper in De Kalb pulled Parker over for speeding. She told the officer that she had just given birth on the side of the road and that the infant was not breathing.

Parker and the baby were both brought by ambulance to McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel, Okla where the baby died. Hospital workers were suspicious of Parker when she declined to be examined up by doctors.

The same morning, authorities in New Boston, Texas, received a 911 call from a lady who stated that her daughter had been murdered. Simmons, who was 34 weeks pregnant, was discovered by the responding authorities with a massive abdominal cut and her unborn child no longer inside her womb.

According to court documents, Simmons Hancock was stabbed and cut more than 100 times and had her skull smashed with a hammer before a scalpel was used to remove her unborn baby.

Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp told jurors Parker is "an actress of the greatest kind" who lied about being pregnant for nearly 10 months to keep her boyfriend around.

Crisp asserted that Parker posed as pregnant, fabricated ultrasounds, threw a gender-reveal party, and even posted about her phony pregnancy on social media.

"The lies and fraud go on and on; the layers of fraud are staggering," Crisp said, according to both outlets. "You are going to have to understand the fraud to understand what happened on Oct. 9. This started months and months ahead of time until it passed the point of no return, and it ended up in homicide."

Parker left Simmons Hancock's 3-year-old daughter alone with her dying mother after the attack.

Crisp told jurors Parker's scheme even involved a bomb threat to a hospital, delaying her scheduled induction.

"Taylor Parker didn't want anymore children," Crisp told the jury. "She killed Reagan and ripped her baby out to keep her boyfriend."

Crisp stated that Parker "put Reagan's placenta down her pants to make it appear as if she had given birth on the side of the road" after the murder.

One of her attorneys, Jeff Harrelson, urged the jury to consider all of the trial's evidence.

Harrelson stated,

"It's a complicated case, factually and emotionally," Harrelson said. "The law is the lens and filter you must view these facts through. Sometimes it's not black and white but a shade of gray."

Trial and Sentencing

Taylor Rene Parker was found guilty of capital murder in the murders of Reagan Michelle Simmons and her baby after approximately one hour of deliberation, according to the district attorney's office. The same jury was then entrusted with choosing between the death penalty and life without parole as her sentence.

The jury handed down the death sentence.

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With her death sentence, Parker becomes one of seven women on death row in Texas.

“We are just so thankful justice has been served today, for not only our family, our friends, the prosecution team, our community,” Jessica Brooks, the mother of the victim stated.

“I’m overwhelmed with happiness it’s over,” the victim’s sister Emily Simmons said, “because (Parker) has been such a burden in our life for so long now that I haven’t been able to think about my sister without thinking about her.”