A Bowie County jury in Texas found Taylor Rene Parker, 29, guilty of the October 2020 murder of Reagan Michelle Simmons-Hancock, 21 and the kidnapping of the daughter who was ripped from her womb when she was about to be born, who also died.
This verdict was reached by the jury after almost three weeks of testimony, some of it very frightening.
Secondly, Parker’s attorneys sought dismissal of a kidnapping charge, arguing the baby was not alive at the time he was removed from the mother. in order to reduce the charge from capital murder to murder.
Parker’s attorney, Jeff Harrelson, noted, “That’s why we spend so much time on definitions in opening statements. You can’t kidnap a person who wasn’t born alive.”
This argument fell apart when doctors involved in the investigation testified that the baby had a heartbeat when he was born.
“We have methodically laid out what she did, why she did it, all the moving parts and all the collateral damage. The best evidence the state of Texas has that the baby was born alive is that Taylor Parker said it wasn’t,” prosecutor Kelley Crisp said.
For its part, Prosecutor Lauren Richards described the entire montage that Parker made with her close circle to make her pregnancy seem real.
“She is a liar, a manipulator, and now she will be held accountable for it,” Lauren Richards told the jury.
He reminded the jury how the victim was stabbed and slashed more than 100 times, her skull smashed with a hammer at her New Boston, Texas, home before a scalpel was used to remove her unborn baby.
“The pain Reagan must have felt as Taylor began to cut his abdomen, from hip to hip…indescribable. When Taylor had the baby and Reagan was still alive, that’s when Taylor started cutting and cutting. She can’t let her live. It was not a quick death. She kept cutting it. I guess Reagan wouldn’t die fast enough for Taylor to get out of there and continue with her plans,” Richards said.
The final phase of punishment is scheduled for October 12. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, although jurors can opt for a life sentence without parole.