Taylor Parker, who is facing the death penalty, had made her boyfriend and relatives believe that she was expecting a child for months, discussing her – fictitious – pregnancy on social networks and going so far as to buy herself a silicone fake belly. In reality, she could no longer have children, having had her uterus removed.
The baby did not survive
On October 9, 2020, Taylor Parker went to Reagan Simmons-Hancock, a 21-year-old woman who was in the last months of her pregnancy, and stabbed her more than a hundred times. After cutting open her stomach to take out her fetus, she left, leaving the victim’s 3-year-old daughter asleep in another room.
Taylor Parker was arrested shortly after, about fifteen kilometers from the scene of the murder, driving her car, the newborn baby on her lap. She had assured that she had just given birth. The baby, hospitalized, had not survived.
Accused spotted pregnant women in stores
Taylor Parker has been on trial since Monday for killing a pregnant woman in order to extract and steal the fetus. The trial, opened in the small town of New Boston, east of Dallas, is expected to last at least a month.
On Tuesday, an investigator explained on the stand that, a few weeks before the murder, Taylor Parker had started scouting pregnant women in specialty stores or maternity hospitals, according to local television station KTAL. She had made appointments herself at some of the clinics, and had been seen there, he said.
Shortly before the facts, she would have watched many videos of childbirth and caesarean sections. The investigator said he believed she was posing as a midwife so she could meet pregnant women, according to KTAL.