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Parker was sentenced to death in 2022, but is still alive and could stay behind bars as long as 30 years without being killed
Taylor Parker was sentenced to death in 2022 after having been found guilty of murdering Reagan Simmons Hancock and kidnapping her unborn baby, cutting open her belly and stealing the fetus from her.
The horrific case in which Parker lied to her boyfriend Wade Griffin about being pregnant for months prior to the murder and attempt to steal Reagan’s baby has seen renewed interest thanks to Netflix’s new hit true crime documentary Maternal Instinct.
Despite having been sentenced to death in 2022 however, Taylor Parker is still alive today, living on Death Row in Texas as one of only seven female inmates.
She is statistically unlikely to be executed anytime soon either, with the average time before execution on death row being a whopping 11 years due to the complex system of appeals that apply to death sentences.
In her sole interview from behind bars though, Parker spoke about what it was like living on Death Row and even said it was like living at a ‘Hilton Hotel’ compared to being in ‘genpop’, general population prison.
Parker was interviewed as part of a feature about the nuns that help support death row prisoners
Taylor Parker
Parker spoke to The New Yorker as part of the feature The Nuns Trying to Save the Women on Texas’s Death Row. Netflix’s Maternal Instinct purposely did not seek out an interview with the murderer, with the director stating they wanted to focus on the victim Reagan, leaving this the best insight into Parker’s state of mind years on from her horrific crime.
She said in the interview that the weight of her crimes only really hit her during her trial, pinpointing the moment she ‘saw reality’. Parker said: “I was in a full-on war in my mind. I told myself, ‘You didn’t do what they said. It’s lies’.
“My realization came when I had to face the autopsy photos. Jesus hit me straight on, flesh to flesh. That courtroom was so silent, but I heard his voice loud and clear. He told me to open my eyes and see reality.”
Parker said she is ‘grateful’ to be in prison and said that county jail was a terrible experience
Death Row prisoners spend an average of 11 years before being executed (Texas Department of Corrections)
The murderer was not granted bail after her arrest, spending almost two years in county jail awaiting her trial and sentencing.
Speaking about this experience she said that she had been placed on a ‘four-unit cell with mentally unstable inmates’, adding: “I was with inmates who ate feces and blood.
“This is the Hilton compared to the county jail.”