A Texas jury handed down the death penalty to a Sims woman who killed her pregnant acquaintance and stole her unborn baby.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Taylor Rene Parker, 29, (pictured left), also known as Taylor Waycasey and Taylor Morton, was indicted by a grand jury last year for capital murder in connection with the death of the unborn baby girl, Braxlynn Sage Hancock.
Parker was already facing a capital murder charge in connection with the death of an acquaintance, Reagan Hancock (pictured right), 21, as well as a kidnapping charge. Hancock was found dead in her home in October 2020, after Parker allegedly fled with the baby, who later passed away.
On Wednesday, the same Bowie County jury sentenced Parker to death, CBS News reports. It took the jury a little over an hour to return the verdict.
After a little more than an hour of deliberation a Bowie County jury on Wednesday sentenced convicted murderer Taylor Parker to death. https://t.co/Ccuz6MnIuc
— Texarkana Gazette (@TXKGazette) November 9, 2022
During opening statements in September, Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp told the jury that Parker not only wanted a baby but also took desperate measure measures to keep her boyfriend from leaving.
Crisp added Parker used a fake belly disguise to make herself look pregnant while going to fraudulent ultrasounds and posting about her pregnancy on social media. She even had a gender-reveal party, according to the prosecutor, NBC DFW reports.
“How did we get here?” Crisp asked the jury on Monday.
“How did it get this far? She is an actress, an actress of the highest order. The lies and fraud go on and on; the layers of fraud are staggering. 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.”
The prosecution added that Parker had her tubes tied and couldn’t have babies. She also allegedly “stalked OB clinics” in both Louisiana and Texas. Prior to the murder, Parker watched YouTube videos on how to perform a C-section.
The jury also heard about a scheme Parker tried to pull off with a real estate company in December 2019, prior to the murder and kidnapping.
According to real estate agent Rusty Lowe, who took the stand in September, Parker said she was the Blackburn syrup heir while trying to purchase a $4.7 million home for her and her boyfriend, Wade Griffin.
She would have needed at least $200,000 to put down on the home in “earnest payment,” he testified, which she said she would get to him.
At the time, Parker’s income was from two part-time office jobs.
Lowe added that Parker and Griffin acted “oddly urgent” with their interest in the home, NBC 6 reports. He also said the pair showed up to view the property in a car that “kind of didn’t match the situation.”
“Still, we always give people the benefit of the doubt, but we have to vet that,” Lowe said.
Lowe testified that he worked with Parker for four months while trying to verify the earnest payment funds, which ultimately never panned out. In April 2020, Parker told Lowe that the deal was off and that her mother “made the whole thing up,” the outlet reports.
In a court statement, Simmons-Hancock’s mother, Jessica Brooks, called the defendant an “evil piece of flesh demon,” Texarkana Gazette reports.
“My baby was alive still fighting for her babies when you tore her open and ripped her baby from her stomach,” Brooks added.
After hearing the impact statement, Judge John Tidwell ordered the bailiff to “take her [Parker] to death row.”
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[Feature Photo: Taylor Parker/Facebook; Reagan Hancock/Facebook]
