Reagan Simmons-Hancock Bio – Reagan Simmons-Hancock Wiki
A Texas woman was sentenced to death Wednesday for killing an expectant mother in an attempt to steal her unborn baby. In October, Taylor Rene Parker, 29, was found guilty of capital murder for the stabbing death of Reagan Simmons-Hancock, 21, in Oct. 2020 and taking the victim’s baby from her womb.
Death
A jury took less than two hours of deliberating before sentencing Parker to death, TXK Today reported.
“The circumstances in which Reagan died are horrible, and there is no doubt it was torture,” First Bowie County Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp said during closing statements, the Texarkana Gazette reported. “But a mother died fighting for her child, and that’s how she left the world. A woman who died fighting.”
“She slashed her hundreds of times,” said Crisp, who showed jurors a photo of the crime scene. “She beat her with a hammer. Are you going to say she is not violent? She ripped her uterus out by the back. Look at what she did.”
Parker’s attorney Jeff Harrelson described Parker as a “woman, daughter, sister and mother” and said she had no help from family or friends “when everyone saw the wheels were off,” the Gazette reported.
Simmons-Hancock was approximately seven-and-a-half months pregnant when her daughter, who she planned to name Braxlynn Sage Hancock, was taken from her womb.
Parker was speeding and pulled over by a Texas State Trooper in De Kalb shortly after the attack.
She allegedly told the officer she had given birth by the side of the road and that the baby was not breathing.
Parker and the baby were both rushed by ambulance to McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel, Okla. Still, the hospital staff was suspicious of Parker when she refused to be checked out by doctors.
The baby was declared dead at the hospital.
Prosecutors said Parker lied about being pregnant for nearly ten months to keep her boyfriend around. She faked ultrasounds, had a gender-reveal party, and even posted about her fake pregnancy on social media.
After the attack, Parker left Simmons-Hancock’s 3-year-old daughter alone with her dying mom.
In a victim’s impact statement, Simmons-Hancock’s younger sister Emily Simmons told Parker she stole her only biological sister from her.
“You need to understand what you took from my family and me,” she said, according to the Gazette. “No more celebrating her birthday. I was barely 19 when I got the call; my sister was goneIf I visited my sister; I must go to a graveyard and see a headstone. I will never get a text or phone call from her again.”
In a statement to the court, Simmons-Hancock’s mother, Jessica Brooks, called Parker an “evil piece of flesh demon.”
“My baby was alive, still fighting for her babies when you tore her open and ripped her baby from her stomach,” she said.
Harrelson provided a statement to PEOPLE after the sentencing.
“Based on the strong defense case we put on at sentencing, we are disappointed in the verdict, but we respect the jury’s findings after a long, factually and emotionally difficult trial,” he said.