Netflix's Maternal Instinct examines the case of Taylor Parker, a 27-year-old East Texas woman whose deception led to murder. On October 9, 2020, Parker killed Reagan Simmons-Hancock, a 21-year-old who was eight months pregnant, and cut the unborn baby from her womb. The infant, Braxlynn Sage Hancock, died as a result.
Wade Griffin met Parker at a rodeo in summer 2019. She "lit up the room when she walked in," he recalled, and seemed to embrace the country farm life he loved. Parker claimed she had a $6 million inheritance—a lie that was the start of many. She told people she was pregnant, despite not being so. Wade's mother, Connie Griffin, testified at Parker's 2022 murder trial that she "pretty well knew" the pregnancy was fake but attended the gender reveal party anyway to keep peace in the family.
Parker admitted to investigators she got into a physical fight with Hancock and removed the baby, but pleaded not guilty to capital murder and kidnapping. Prosecutors said each lie spawned new ones to cover the previous falsehood.
"As one story, one lie, one scheme was presented," Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Andrew Venable testified, "additional lies had to be created to support that as each started to unravel."
Parker is now on death row in Texas—the seventh woman currently awaiting execution in the state. Wade Griffin struggles to comprehend the woman he once loved. "As unimaginable what she did," he says in the documentary, "I don't even know how to explain it."
