Taylor Parker is a woman from Texas who was sentenced to death for the murders of a woman and her unborn child
Taylor Parker would brutally attack Reagan Hancock who was thirty five weeks pregnant at the time. Parker would cut the child out Reagan Hancock womb. Both the mother and child would die.
Taylor Parker would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
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Where Is Taylor Parker Now
Taylor Parker is currently incarcerated at the Mountain View facility in Texas
Taylor Parker Sentenced To Death
A Bowie County jury Wednesday returned a sentence of death for convicted murderer Taylor Parker.
The jury in New Boston deliberated just over 90 minutes before returning her sentence.
In her closing statement, prosecutor Kelley Crisp brought tears to many eyes sitting in the gallery.
Parker, 29, was charged in the Oct. 9, 2020 death of Reagan Hancock, 21, and cutting her unborn baby from her uterus who also died.
Crisp, without warning, displayed a graphic picture of Hancock brutally murdered and cut open body lying in hers and her baby’s blood while gasps could be heard in the courtroom.
Defense Attorney Jeff Harrelson drove home the point to the jury that Parker was human, she was flawed, but still a human.
The trial and sentencing phase lasted 49 days, including 25 days of testimony, 142 witnesses, some twice, and over 100 pieces of evidence.
Judge John Tidwell order Parker be transferred to death row at the Mountain View Correctional Unit in the small Texas town of Gatesville.
Taylor Parker News
A Texas woman convicted of killing a pregnant woman she knew and kidnapping her unborn daughter, has been sentenced to death.
A Bowie County jury last month found Taylor Rene Parker guilty of capital murder in the fall 2020 slayings of Reagan Michelle Simmons-Hancock, 21, and her baby. Parker was also convicted in the abduction of the baby cut from the victim’s womb who later died.
Online court records show jurors delivered the death sentence Wednesday.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, although jurors were tasked with handing down the sentence, with the alternative being life in prison without parole.
Simmons-Hancock’s body was found Oct. 9, 2020, at her home in New Boston, about 160 miles northeast of Dallas near the Texas-Oklahoma state line.
According to a probable cause affidavit, that same month, Parker told her boyfriend she was pregnant, held a gender reveal party and said she was going to a hospital in Oklahoma to preregister for labor to be induced.
That same day, police received a 911 call from a woman who reported someone had killed her daughter, the affidavit shows. Responding officers found Simmons-Hancock, who had been 34 weeks pregnant, with a large cut along her abdomen and the baby no longer in her womb.
The affidavit goes on to read, Texas state troopers conducted a traffic stop of a car that day and found Parker holding a baby in her lap and “the umbilical cord was connected to the infant, which appeared to be coming out of the female’s pants, as if she gave birth to the child,” the affidavit continues.
During the hearing, a photo was shown of Hancock’s body at the crime scene, the outlet KSLA reported. Prosecutors said they want to remember her as a mother who died fighting for her baby. Earlier in the trial, Hancock’s fingernails were found in the placenta.
Parker’s attorneys had argued the baby was never alive and moved to dismiss a kidnapping charge, which would have lowered the capital murder charge to murder.
But at trial, several medical professionals testified the infant had a heartbeat when born.
“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 victim’s mother told local news outlet KSLA.
