Maternal Instinct (2026) – Transcript

Maternal Instinct (2026)
Director: Jessica Dimmock
Cast: Taylor Parker, Wade Griffin, Jessica Brookes, Reagan Simmons-Hancock, McKenzie “Kenzie” Bright & Abby Bell
Release date: June 12, 2026

Plot: The film explores the terrifying true story of Taylor Parker, who faked her pregnancy for months before murdering her friend Reagan Simmons-Hancock in 2020 and abducting her unborn child.

* * *

Transcript

Note for Students & Writers: This transcript is archived here for educational purposes, critical analysis, and screenwriting study. All rights belong to the original creators.

[woman 1 speaks indistinctly]

[woman 1 speaks indistinctly]

[mysterious, ethereal music plays]

[woman 1] New Boston, 911. What’s your emergency?

[Taylor Parker] I need an ambulance ’cause I started having my baby.

[woman 1] Stay on the line. I’m gonna get you to LifeNet.

[Taylor] I have a trooper behind me. Stay on the line.

It’s gonna be okay. Stay on the line.

[dial tone pulses]

[siren wails]

[phone dialing]

[man] Emergency.

[Taylor sobs] I just need an ambulance to get to Idabel.

[woman 1] She’s gone into labor. She has a state trooper behind her.

[man] Okay.

[Taylor] Hurry! Please! [man] Is the trooper with her?

[woman 1] Yeah, he was, uh, pulling her over as she called.

[man] Ma’am, are you still here with me?

[trooper] What’s wrong, ma’am? I had my baby.

And I’m trying to get to I-Idabel Hospital where my husband–

[trooper] Idabel? Yeah, my husband’s up there.

[trooper] Need LifeNet out, uh, to my location.

Lady in this vehicle who appeared to just have a baby.

She was carrying the baby in her lap. Umbilical cord is still attached.

She’s not breathing.

[trooper] The baby’s not breathing. She’s doing CPR on the baby right now.

Can you just put me in your car and drive us so we’re not sitting?

Please, I’m begging you.

[trooper] There’s nothing I can do. You’re gonna need EMS.

I’m fine, if you’ll just get us there as quick as possible.

[trooper] Thank you. Uh, LifeNet’s already on scene.

[medic 1] You just gave birth? [medic 2] Turn around and sit down.

[Taylor] Okay.

[medic 1] How old you say you was?

[Taylor] 27. [medic 1] 27?

[Taylor] I think I was born in ’92. [medic 1] Okay.

So you was– You was on your way to Idabel to– to have the baby?

[woman] Yeah. [medic 1] Okay.

[people chatter] [medic 1] Okay.

[Taylor sobs] [medic 1] Just relax, darling.

[siren wails]

[cop 1 whispers] Do not let her out that door.

I’m gonna need– Getting real, real jumpy in there.

[cop 1] So she shows no signs…

You won’t– You can’t check for hemorrhaging?

She should be hemorrhaging by now.

She’s in there.

She refuses to have a vaginal check to make sure she’s not hemorrhaging.

They’ve done ultrasound and HCG, and it doesn’t show that she’s been pregnant.

They have the placenta.

Where is she? [cop 1] She is in the room.

You’re not letting her leave? No.

[masked nurse] Can I help you? [cop 1] This is…

This is a big deal. [cop 1] Yeah.

[masked nurse] Okay, yes. Are you ready?

[eerie music plays]

[man] Hey, there.

What’s your name?

Taylor Parker.

Taylor. Hey. My name is Chad Dansby. I’m a…

I’m an OSBI agent up here, and I heard you brought your baby in.

Yes, sir.

Did you give birth on the side of the road or something?

Yes, sir. Oh, okay.

Where was that? Here? In McCurtain County?

No, it was in De Kalb.

De Kalb. Down in Texas?

Yes, sir. Oh, okay.

[voice breaking] Did I do something wrong for them bringing me over here?

So you– you gave birth to this child?

Yes. I–

[cop 1] We’re– We’re just making sure, okay?

If there’s anything you need to talk to us about, you can.

I don’t know what everybody wants me to talk about.

I’m just trying to figure out where this baby came from.

I just told y’all what happened.

Okay.

What’s the doctor gonna find when he comes in and checks you?

Is he gonna find you just gave birth?

I- They can tell.

When he looks, he can tell in about a second if you gave birth or not.

O– Okay.

Yeah.

So is he gonna find that you gave birth this morning?

Yes. Okay.

Let’s see. [Chad] So we’ll jump out.

[doctor] Sit you up.

All right, well, let me have them sit you up there where I can see what I’m doing.

I didn’t– It doesn’t look like she had a baby.

[cop 1] It doesn’t? No.

[cop 1] Okay.

Does not look like she had a baby down there.

[cop 2] Get ready.

[Chad] Where’d this baby come from?

It’s mine!

Can’t be.

Can’t be.

[eerie music continues playing]

[music turns ethereal]

[insects chirping]

[birds chirp]

[sprawling, forlorn music plays]

[woman] Coming from a small town, you can trust easy.

And, um…

And I guess that’s kind of the direction it went.

[man 1] From my perspective, there’s way more good people than there are bad.

But there’s evil in our land.

Evil people do evil things.

[man 2] Come on, come on, come on.

[man 1] There is an inner spirit that tries to protect us.

A really, really subtle voice.

And we don’t have enough sense to listen to it sometimes.

Most of the time, actually.

[woman 2] It’s still very raw to all of us.

We still are just kind of like, “I can’t believe this happened.”

Like, “Why didn’t we listen to the people that told us?”

“I still can’t believe it.”

[interviewer] Who is Taylor?

Taylor is… hard to describe.

[tense music plays]

I think that it’s hard to describe Taylor because there’s so many aspects to her and all her personalities.

The Taylor that I knew was, at one time, a good friend.

She made you feel like the best person on the planet.

She came off as a normal country girl.

She came off as a– She was fresh from the country.

I mean, like a country hick.

And with her looks, a lot of people would kind of flirt with her about it.

She loved attention. Loves attention.

[chimes]

Her whole mission in life was to be the pretty girl that caught the eye of a guy.

And then she met Wade.

Is it hot in here to y’all, or is it just me?

[interviewer] It’s– It’s mostly you, probably.

[chuckles]

[announcer] …two, three, let’s cut ’em loose!

[gentle folk music plays]

[Wade] It all kind of started in the summer of 2019.

[announcer] Make some noise, encourage ’em. Come on!

[Wade] I remember that time that I met Taylor.

She’d seen me at the rodeo and then wanted to know if I was single and wanted to hang out sometime.

She was a pretty girl, you know, just kind of lit up the room when she walked in, smiling from ear to ear.

I was like, well, it wouldn’t hurt nothing to go out to eat or something with her and, you know, see what kind of person she is.

And it just kind of went from there.

She comes to work, and she is just, I mean, just smitten

and tickled pink, and was talking about how much she likes this guy.

He was just a good old country boy that was laid back.

He was a hard worker.

He seemed just, you know, a good catch that had never been married, no past baggage.

[Connie] She just kind of came out of nowhere, you know?

But she was pretty crazy about him, and it was important to her to make him happy.

And I could see why Wade would be attracted to her.

[Taylor laughs]

Damn it, Wade!

[mock gasps] I’m making a video of you being abusive! [laughs]

[Wade] You know, most girls, they don’t really like the country life, but she was different about that kind of stuff.

She’d been around the horses, cows, all the farm stuff, driving tractor.

I was a country guy. She was a country girl.

That’s what she was attracted to.

[Wade] Oh, man! Oh, he let it go!

Get it, Frank!

[dogs bark]

[Roger] Seemed like they were doing things together.

She’d go hog hunting with him. She’d help him catch hogs.

[Connie] She was right there, shoulder to shoulder.

He seemed like he was happy, and people liked her.

Man, I thought she was fantastic.

She was somebody that you’d want to hang around with, you know, you could kick it off with.

[snaps] Quick like, you know?

[Stephanie] She actually came right up to me and gave me a hug.

She was so glad to meet me. She loved our family.

[Codey] My wife loved her, you know?

“Wade, you done found–” You know? “A good one right here.”

“This one, you need to marry her.”

[Angela] Wade was working with my husband, and they were right around the corner.

A lot of times, weekly, we would have– have ’em come over, and we’d grill steaks out.

When I first met Taylor, she was working for a hiring agency.

But she told me her family had lots of money.

I was told she had a– a grandma and grandpa that lived down at– around Bassett.

[droning folk music plays]

They’re the one that holds all the money of all the oil wells in the Sulphur River Bottoms.

I mean, it was a lot of money.

I was like, “Gosh, Wade, if she’s got all this kind of money and stuff, you know?”

“And, man, she’s got a good personality, you know, she likes to hang out.”

“That’s what you’ve always been looking for.” You know?

[Wade] I knew they had some money, but I didn’t know how much.

She just said she has plenty set aside that the grandma done worked out with her.

[Angela] Then she told me that her mother was fighting with her about money, that money she wasn’t actually getting, but someday she was gonna be this millionaire.

I mean, that’s what she told us.

Her mother was going to get her cut completely out of all the money.

She wasn’t gonna get nothing.

She hated her mother, and her mother hated her.

Taylor just portrayed her mom just to be a– pretty much, a greedy monster. Um…

[music turns lively]

I was just kind of there being as supportive as I could, but it was just– it was never-ending of the family drama.

From my perspective, they didn’t actually fit.

He was born to a family of workers, and he wasn’t making any money to speak of, and she was born in a family of people that had lots of money.

From my experiences of life, I’ve never really seen a relationship like that work for very long.

[dogs barking]

[Connie] All of a sudden, she sold all of her furniture and pretty much emptied the house out that she was renting, and she moved in with him.

And I think that that was kind of the point where I realized it was… becoming more serious.

[tender music plays]

[Connie] It was kind of strange that she didn’t seem to have a lot to store.

Just kind of traveled light, you know?

[Wade] She told me that because her mom don’t want her having no inheritance and no property and no money, and she don’t know what extreme her mom’s gonna go to.

She said, “I think it’s a good idea if I move in with you for more protection.”

And so she did.

[music turns intriguing]

She had two kids.

Her daughter would be with us during the week, but we never seen the boy that often.

I noticed instead of really spending one-on-one time with her, it was more “What was Wade doing?” You know?

[laughing] We’re trying to figure out how to do your trailer.

This is broke, Wade. You’re missing a bolt.

I can fix that so don’t– don’t be mad.

[Stephanie] She did seem to have a big heart.

Would do anything in the world for Wade.

Anything he asked.

She would mow the yard, she would have supper ready.

I think he loved that.

[Wade] She’d make sure she had a good meal cooked when I got home from work.

She would take care of the animals.

Anything I asked her to do, she would do. So she did pull her weight.

After she started living with Wade, she was over at my house, uh, constantly.

So by this time, you know, I’ve heard story upon story upon story of– you know, about her mother.

Then one day she told me her mother had lost favor with the rest of her family because of her threats to Taylor.

So she suddenly was gonna get more money from her grandmother.

[Connie] She was going to inherit eight million or so.

[bold music plays]

Eight million dollars was just something that you don’t hear every day.

[Wade] I didn’t really know what to think, but she said that’ll make things a lot– a lot better off now.

[Codey] He was thinking her grandparents were gonna give all that to her in the will and stuff, and then Wade was like, “Gosh, damn, if they do that, then damn, I’m set.”

[bold music intensifies]

[Angela] When all of a sudden this seemed like they were gonna get all this money, I mean, they were buying everything. They were buying cars and side-by-sides and cattle.

They done bought a $20,000 side-by-side, done bought him a $60,000, $80,000 tractor, and now done went and bought a $87,000 truck.

I mean, money’s got to be coming from somewhere, you know.

[Roger] It was like a Cadillac, you know.

So I’m sitting here, thinking, “That’s a $100,000 truck.”

“There’s no way you can afford that pickup.”

He said, “Well, I’ll tell you, there’s some things you don’t know about me.”

I’d been shopping for a car for quite a while, and she pulled up in my driveway, and she said, “How do you like my new car?”

And I said, “Man, that’s nice,” you know?

And she said, “Well, it’s yours. I bought you a car.”

Posted it on Facebook.

You can tell from the picture that I was kind of reeling from it all.

You know, with Wade, I really saw a side of him that I hadn’t seen before.

Like, he deserved more.

But the big thing was this big ranch that Wade had wanted, and she was gonna make sure he got that.

[Wade] She was telling me she would like to buy a nice piece of property somewhere.

It didn’t really matter the price.

So I told her, I said, “Well, there’s this property in Harris, Oklahoma.”

“It’s right there on Red River.”

[mouse clicking]

[suspenseful music continues]

[clock ticking]

Fall of ’19, I received a phone call from a woman named Taylor.

She was a very well put-together young lady, spoke in a very professional manner, who expressed an interest in a property that’s, uh, known as Pecan Point.

[cows low]

[keyboard clacking]

Her and Wade obviously had spoken about it at length, and they were looking for what they referred to as “a local sportsman’s paradise.”

Wade was very interested in the local feral hog population.

[woman] She had on jeans, she was well-dressed.

Her hair was nicely done.

But you know, especially in the farm and ranch industry, uh, those are very grounded people who might not look as though they could purchase a multimillion-dollar property, but, in fact, they could purchase multiple million-dollar properties.

[Rusty] My initial impression was that she probably had some family money.

She certainly indicated that, and was ready to make an offer.

Four million dollars, I believe.

She was adamant that we’re– she was gonna pay cash.

We were rooting for her.

[man] I seen that, and he said, “You’ll be surprised at what that means.”

It’s got the house, and all the barns, and that part–

It’s got one big barn on it, and then it has, I guess, it’s kinda like a makeshift half-house, and then their pecan cleaning production, but we don’t get any of the equipment on that.

[Connie] When we went to my sister’s for the family gathering that day, they decided to have a little presentation in front of everybody.

It was a big deal for Taylor and Wade, so we filmed it.

…we’re gonna run the pecans on it. We have about 500 acres.

[Connie] Wade kind of took a back seat, and she stood in the middle of the room, and all the attention was on her.

We’re pretty excited. It’s a big adventure for both of us.

[Connie] Everybody’s listening, and they’re all just kind of in awe of it all.

Kinda cool.

Wow.

That’s a super cool place.

[man] Well, Merry Christmas.

[woman 1 laughs]

[Wade] Thank you, man.

[woman 2] Merry Christmas.

It’s “Pecan Bend” now.

[Wade] She just, she shined.

I mean, she just kind of painted a– a pretty picture, kind of for the future.

[Connie] The thing about it was, Pecan Point wasn’t something she would necessarily want herself, but she knew Wade would.

[“Carol of the Bells” plays]

[Wade] She made it all look and seem, like, you know, pretty normal or, you know, a dream come true, more or less.

[tense, ethereal music plays]

You know, I hadn’t known Taylor but just a couple months, and something just kind of still questioned me about, you know, “This is all happening way too fast.”

[interviewer] What happened to the car that she gave you?

[Connie] I had it about three weeks, and she said, “I need y’all to bring the car to Wade’s and park it in the driveway.”

“Patterson Nissan, they’re coming to pick it up on a recall.”

So I finally called the dealership, and I said, “What’s going on with my car?”

They said, “Ma’am, that car wasn’t paid for.”

“That’s why we came and got it.”

It was repossessed.

I said, “Oh.”

“Okay.” [chuckles]

You know, a mom just knows. They know.

You just know when it’s your kid. It’s a sixth sense or something.

You just know that something’s just not right.

I just began to worry, you know, “What’s gonna happen if this doesn’t go through?”

Because I knew he couldn’t afford those things.

He couldn’t pay for that.

[Rusty] Her and Wade signed the offer.

In the next couple of days, we got it back, and I asked her to verify funds.

[Renee] She was finally going to be able to get her inheritance.

We have to do a little bit more vetting, if you will, when it’s a cash transaction coming from a trust or an inheritance.

[telephone rings]

[Rusty] I might get a call from her lawyer.

I’ve received a couple of letters from a local banker.

Many times these forms of communication would come to us at odd hours, shortly after five o’clock in the afternoon or maybe on a Saturday morning.

Taylor put me in contact with Shelly Linx, who oversaw her oil lease money.

[second telephone rings]

I had, uh, made a couple attempts to reach Shelly.

We would call. We would leave a voicemail.

One time, Shelly emailed us back, kind of reprimanding us for asking too many personal questions about her customer.

[woman] “Mr. Lowe…”

[woman and Rusty] “Bank information is completely confidential.”

“The clients are not okay with the seller calling their bank and are firm on their decision in that matter.”

“Thank you, Shelly.”

I– I mean, I was getting my butt chewed out, obviously, for checking up on her.

As time moved on, Taylor referred us to an uncle that was from the Northwest named Butch.

And Uncle Butch was going to wire transfer $300,000 so she could write two checks for $150,000 each as escrow money.

And… that didn’t happen either.

[dog barks in distance]

[Wade whistling softly to dogs]

[Wade] I didn’t really know what to think.

I’ve never dealt with this much at one time, this fast.

[hogs grunting]

I think there’s something else going on.

A lot of times I would go to work and confide with my boss, Roger.

He’d say, “Everything happens for a reason.”

He said, you know, “Me and my wife both love her to death.”

“I don’t see her taking you down no bad path.”

“So whatever, you know, she’s telling you, it’s gonna– it’s gonna be the truth.”

[dreary music plays]

All of a sudden the money wasn’t coming like it’s supposed to, and there’s more and more fights.

[phone chimes]

[Stephanie] She would text me and say, “I don’t think he loves me.”

“I bought him this truck, and he’s not acting any different towards me.”

“I think he may be talking to somebody else.”

[Taylor] Can you please call me back?

[urgently] I have tried and tried to call you.

I am trying to figure something out so I can tell Shelly.

I need you to call me back on– someway, somehow.

[Angela] She was, uh, stressful all the time that she was gonna lose Wade.

[woman] I work from home, and I could see his house from where I was working.

And Wade would be riding the side-by-side out to the farm, and she was just holding him, embracing him like, just, “This is my guy.”

Like, “I love him so much.”

And Wade would just be… He just seemed very distant from her.

[Angela] She came over to my house one day when her and Wade were fighting a lot.

She wanted to see me as a chiropractor, which I am.

She came in, she was just real ecstatic, real happy.

She said, “I want you to talk to my body and ask if I’m pregnant.”

I asked her, I said, “Why do you think you’re pregnant?”

And she said, “Well, I looked in the mirror and my aura has changed.”

[dreamy music plays]

“I just know it.”

“So how can I tell Wade?”

[chuckles] And I said, “Well, you don’t.”

“You don’t tell Wade anything until you know.”

She was convinced.

One evening, she hits me with, “I’m pretty sure I’m– I’m pregnant.”

Angela took her to the doctor, she got a test, and lo and behold, she come back out of there with paperwork showing she was pregnant.

She sent me a text message and said, “I think I’m pregnant.”

And I was like, “Congratulations.”

[Connie] They announced that she was pregnant.

So I thought, “Okay.”

Wade was maybe a little nervous about what was fixing to come and change his life, you know?

I mean, I like to take stuff slow, not just start jumping from dating one month to all, “I’m already pregnant.”

But Roger was tickled to death. Angela was happy.

So if she’s pregnant, then I was good with it.

She had said, “I want this baby to call you Aunt Bae, Best Aunt Ever.”

So she actually went and had a shirt made.

[Tiffany] I know that she was preparing.

Like, we had a garage sale on the street, and there was a high chair.

And she was like, “Oh, I want that high chair.”

We brought it over to her, and she was excited to have it.

[Wade] I’ve never had kids before, so this was all a first for me.

And she’s already had two. “You’re the expert here.”

“I mean, I’m just gonna go with whatever you’re telling me.”

[Angela] I felt he was obligated.

But I think the money helped that obligation. [chuckles]

[sparse, suspenseful music plays]

[keyboard clacking]

[Wade] She told Codey and Stephanie that, uh, she wants to do a gender reveal.

Double lines!

[phone chimes]

[Stephanie] I was like, “Oh, wow, that’s so exciting.”

But I had asked Codey one day, I’m like, “I don’t think that she, like, really has many friends.”

Because the way she acted towards me.

Well, he actually was like, “Just be nice.”

“She really likes you, so let’s do it this day.”

She had a list of people that she wanted to invite.

I said, “So you’re not… your mom or anything?”

She’s like, “No, don’t mention it to my mom.”

“Nobody on… That’s a no-go. We don’t do that.”

[Angela] Taylor was sending me the report that was saying if it was a boy or a girl.

And so I sent that on over to her friend.

[Stephanie] It said, “Congratulations, Taylor Parker, it’s a girl.”

And I’m, like, looking at this paper really well, and I noticed the date on it.

[suspenseful music plays]

And the date on it said 2016.

So I call her, and I said, “Are you sure this is the right paper?”

And she said, “Let me call my doctor right now.”

Well, it seemed like 30 seconds may have passed by.

And she said, “There were over 200 or 100 misprints that day in the lab.”

“So they’re gonna send a new one, but she did say the gender is right.”

I knew something was off.

[people chatter indistinctly]

[keyboard clacking]

[people laugh and chatter]

[people laugh heartily]

[tender music plays]

[woman] So cute.

[man] It’s a little girl.

[Stephanie] The day of the gender reveal was very awkward.

But she seemed really excited.

She kind of, like, started screaming and jumping up and, like, clapping, and it was kind of quiet.

They come around double-wide over there, they come around the side of the house with a little calf, and it had a pink little bow around its neck.

You know? And they’re all excited and everything else, you know, and I just start clapping or whatnot.

[child 1] Show the cow who’s the boss.

[child 2] Oh, my God!

I told her I always liked the name Clancy.

So she come up with the– the middle name, Clancy Gaile.

When he told me, I was like, “Mmm.” You know?

“That’s different.” [chuckles]

He said, “Mama, I’ve had that name picked out for… for years.”

Y’all wanna get some pictures?

[Codey] He was excited. He was wanting to be a father.

He always wanted to be a father.

I mean, what man does not want to be a father, you know?

I don’t know but a handful, maybe.

[woman] I saw pictures of this gender reveal.

She had this baby calf and had a pink bow around it, and it was a girl.

It made me sick. [chuckles]

It made me so sick to my stomach.

Because I knew, I mean, that she can’t be pregnant.

[dramatic music plays]

She had a hysterectomy.

[man] Our first involvement with Taylor was in 2010, I think, at the age of 17, for her first pregnancy.

After her second child, she did not want to have any more children, so she made the decision on permanent sterilization, physically blocking the tubes

so that you can’t have children anymore.

She signed the appropriate consent forms, went through the wait period, and, uh, was still adamant that that’s what she wanted.

Taylor came back about a year and a half later with bleeding.

She had a cyst on the right ovary.

When we got inside, she also had what looked like a visible ectopic pregnancy in the left tube.

An ectopic pregnancy cannot be carried to term.

It would be dangerous and most likely life-threatening.

The decision was made to do a hysterectomy and a removal of both tubes and the right ovary.

After a patient has had a hysterectomy, she cannot become pregnant because she no longer has a uterus to get pregnant from.

[people chatter and laugh]

[eerie music plays]

[keyboard clacking]

[keyboard clacking]

[woman] This is a small town, and she was a patient of ours.

In 2020, we started seeing, uh, social media posts about her pregnancy.

[Dr. Mason] When we first found out Taylor was saying she was pregnant and announced it on Facebook, we were very confused because we knew that she could not be.

We couldn’t publicly say anything about it because we were bound by privacy laws.

Unless there is something that’s endangering someone else, then we can’t break those HIPAA laws.

We were being put in a very difficult position.

Me and Abby knew she’s not what she paints herself to be.

[all chatter indistinctly]

[woman] Abby! [laughing]

[Abby] Uh-uh!

[McKenzie] And when I first met Taylor, we hit it off immediately.

She became a very close friend of mine, I would say literally almost overnight.

[ethereal music plays]

Before everything happened, Kenzie, Taylor, and I were all best friends.

And we would spend basically all our time together.

Blah!

[women laugh]

[Abby] 24-7. If we weren’t together, there was at least two of us together.

Our emotions were very connected. If I was sad, she was sad.

If she was sad, I was. If she was happy, me too.

But I was worried bad for her.

As my close friend, I was so worried because Taylor stayed sick.

She stayed sick all the time.

She had all these conditions.

She was always in and out of the hospital.

I remember there was always pictures of her, like, in the hospital, she was taking selfies.

[McKenzie] Taylor told me that she had been diagnosed with MS.

She also had cancer, from my understanding.

At one time, she had had, like, a brain tumor or something.

She’d had a stroke.

I mean, all of these things kind of played into each other.

There was a lot of posts about it.

[McKenzie] She would actually have times when you could see deficit from the stroke.

You would see slurring, drooping face.

I mean, I genuinely believed that she had suffered a stroke.

[Abby] It’s always something with Taylor.

She would put on Facebook

that she was either sick or she had a headache.

After it kept happening and happening and happening over and over, I started being like, “Yeah, maybe she’s not really sick.”

“Maybe it’s, like, something else.”

At the same time, I was going through health problems of my own and was actually told that I would never have kids naturally.

Taylor shared those emotions with me.

And then once she found out that I was pregnant, it was like she was pregnant with her own child.

It was just so exciting for both of us.

As my pregnancy progressed, she wanted to be in everything.

And as my best friend, I was fine with that, you know?

But then after Taylor had realized McKenzie was having a girl, things got super weird.

[Kenzie] She wanted to plan the gender reveal.

She wanted to be there for the ultrasounds.

She wanted to know when the appointments were.

How was Kenzie doing? How was the baby doing?

She wanted the login to my pregnancy tracking app so that she could watch the progress of my pregnancy.

[Abby] It was concerning. I mean, I know you’re happy for her, but you don’t have to be, like, crazy happy.

It’s like she wanted the pregnancy to be hers.

And then she asked if one of us could carry a baby for her.

She said, “Okay, I’ve accepted that I can’t have any more kids.”

“Would one of y’all want to do it for me?”

She said that whoever carried this baby would get a minimum of $50,000.

But how could you have another baby when you didn’t even take care of the two kids you had?

That was the first time I took a step back from Taylor and was like…

“You’re scaring me.”

She became obsessive with my pregnancy, and I had to cut her off.

Then I heard through her social media that she was pregnant, that her and Wade were gonna have a baby.

I feel like she got far enough away from our friend group that she could start this whole lie over again.

He didn’t know that she’d had a hysterectomy.

[Stephanie] After the gender reveal, I call that lab, and I just said, “Hey, there was someone I knew that went and had lab work done,” and I read this lady the gender reveal paper, and she said, “We don’t send things like that.”

I actually called the clinic, and I spoke to the office manager, and she said, “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s her name?”

And I said, “Taylor Parker.”

With the HIPAA laws, I told her, I said, “I cannot give you any information since she used to be a patient of ours.”

“But what all you’ve told me, I can tell you this, just go with your…”

“…gut, trust your instincts.”

And I left it at that.

[gloomy music plays]

[Stephanie] Me and Connie are talking at this point, like, she has said so many things that did not add up.

She and I talked every day about what she had learned or found out, and some of the clinics she claimed to have gone to, and they wouldn’t say, but they would kind of say, “You’re– You’re probably on to something.”

I even asked Angela at the time, I said, “Did you go in with her to Healthcare Express?”

She said, “No.”

[Codey] She would sit up in the bed, eleven, twelve o’clock at night, you know, trying to investigate.

You know, I would be nice at first, like, “Baby, what are you still doing up?” You know?

“Oh, I’m just scrolling through Taylor’s…”

Why in the fuck are you scrolling– What the fuck?

Gosh damn, leave that shit alone.

I was like…

“Am I crazy?”

Like, “She wouldn’t go through all this to not be pregnant.”

The gender reveal, her dad was there, her kids were there.

I mean, you know, in your mind you think, “Well, why are they here if it’s not true?”

I mean, they would know.

[Stephanie] She’s got to be pregnant or somebody would say something.

[hogs grunting]

[hogs squeal]

[suspenseful, chiming music plays]

[keyboard clacking]

[calls hogs]

[hogs squeal and grunt]

[Wade] I started getting e-mails and text messages while I was at work.

It’d be from different numbers that I didn’t really know.

Me and Taylor getting them pretty much every day.

I would get some and then she would get some.

This person was sending text messages to him randomly throughout the day and night.

Not just one or two. It’d be eight or ten a day or so.

It was stuff that you would read, like, “Who thinks like this?”

Horrible thoughts.

[keyboard clacking]

[Angela] I got a– a letter in my business e-mail.

That’s when it really kind of started getting involved in our life.

It said, “Listen, you know nothing about Taylor.”

“Don’t try to be a mother figure to her.”

“See, I’m going to send her in such a deep depression, she’ll probably try to kill herself like she’s tried before.”

“But if not then, me making Wade leave will do the trick.”

I told him, I said, “Wade, there’s something going on.”

“This is… This is not right.”

He finally called me one day and he said, “Mama, here, look at these text messages.”

“We found out today that her mother is behind that.”

One evening she called me on the phone and she was terribly distraught, crying on the phone and telling me this whole story about how her mother had come back in the picture and caused all these problems for her, and none of it was gonna work out.

[phone chimes]

[Renee] She was very distraught when she had to tell us that… that wasn’t gonna happen.

She was not gonna be able to purchase.

[Angela] Her mother had gone supposedly in the bank prior and had all kinds of things changed where then she couldn’t get the money.

[moody music plays]

All of a sudden, the mom’s back in the picture.

[chuckles dryly] And she had orchestrated all that.

[Wade] I told her, “I can’t believe your mom is doing this.”

“Can’t believe you and your mom can’t come to some kinda peace on this whole deal.”

But once her mom found out she was pregnant, she was just kind of against her having any kind of kid with me that’s gonna be getting any kind of inheritance like that.

She said, “I warned you what kind of person she was.”

[Connie] It really upset him, you know, that he had to go back and face his family, knowing that it wasn’t ever gonna happen.

[Wade] Right in the middle of everything else that was going on, Taylor was portraying it more, you know, happy-go-lucky family.

Like, “so many weeks pregnant,” and have her hand on her stomach or whatever.

[keyboard clacking]

[McKenzie] All people see is the social media side of things.

All they see is the happy smiling faces and this loving, happy relationship.

It revolved around Taylor. She thrives off validation.

[woman] I knew Taylor from junior high to high school.

She cared about the way she looked. She cared about her weight.

But she was very insecure.

Taylor would meet most of the boys she spoke to online.

She would ask girls for pictures of themselves, neck down.

But she had no shame in saying, like, “Oh, I’m sending it to this guy I’m talking to.”

You know, they’re thinking, like, “You’re just openly asking me to give you a nude picture of myself to send to some random person to catfish them.”

Like, “Taylor!” Like, “What are they going to do when they see you?”

[McKenzie] Not long before I’d met her, she’d lost a lot of weight.

She had a… gastric sleeve done.

She would say things about how her skin looked and how she wished that she could just take it off, you know.

But then would get ready and was so confident.

You could not destroy her confidence.

[Lindsey] I worked with Taylor from 2018 to 2019.

At the time, I was the recruiting coordinator there.

She seemed like a good worker. She seemed like she was on top of it.

She was eager to learn.

To be honest, I was going through a very hard time.

I’d just lost my youngest daughter in February of ’18.

So I was doing good to get up and go to work.

[somber music plays]

When I would have a hard day, you know, Taylor would talk about how she had lost her baby girl too, you know, that was born with brain damage.

And– And so she really knew what it was like to hold, you know, your child while they…

[voice breaks] And so for another mom to feel that, or another person, because you don’t know how that feels until you experience it.

And it’s… beyond devastating.

And that’s what would make me feel like she understood and vice versa.

But, of course, that wasn’t true either.

[McKenzie] She mimicked people in all facets of life.

I feel like she tried to mimic a lot of what I went through too.

It’s almost like she has to piece together parts of other people’s real lives to make hers feel a little bit more real.

You said you gave birth to a baby that had brain damage that you held while dying, like I did my daughter, and that was a lie.

That was my daughter’s story.

That wasn’t for her to use to manipulate and lie.

And it feels very, um, violating.

Later, and only to find out that she actually was not doing any of her job, really.

Not scheduling appointments, really, not inputting applications.

She was using my job title in her e-mails, unbeknownst to our boss.

And that’s when she was fired.

At the same time, Taylor started a side photography business.

She would do it on the weekends, weddings, engagement announcements, family portraits, happy moments, like family-oriented, but happy, big, life-altering life events.

It’s like she wanted to somehow be a part of.

[solemn music plays]

[woman 1] My daughter, Reagan, had a photographer at her wedding.

I asked how, you know, how she came about and what she had done before.

And she said one of her friends had recommended her, and she was trying to stay budget-friendly, so this person was ideal for that.

Um, her name was Taylor Parker.

Very, uh, polite young lady, you know, real…

Pretty, uh– She was a lot like Reagan to me.

[woman 2] The moments she captured of Reagan and the wedding were absolutely beautiful, and Taylor made sure she greeted everybody

and told everyone who she was and what she was doing there.

And– And it didn’t feel like she was just some random stranger none of us had ever met.

Almost felt like she was a bridesmaid at one point, ’cause she was in all of our selfies.

[Jessica] I asked about her. “Who is she? Where is she from?”

Reagan had mentioned that she was going through some difficulties with her ex-husband, I believe is what she said.

She was just kind of having a hard time, and Reagan was trying to include her to kind of take her mind off of that.

So they had gotten close, closer, you know, more acquainted throughout this process, and so Reagan invited her to hang out with everybody after the reception.

She made her feel like just one of us girls.

And I still look at all of those photos today because of how spectacular that day was, and Taylor as a person, you would have never known her to be any other way.

[solemn music intensifies]

[clicks mouse]

[music stops]

[keyboard clacking]

[creepy music plays]

[whirring]

[music turns abrasive]

[Wade] She would go to a doctor appointment, but I couldn’t ever go in with her because of COVID at the time.

When I did try to go, she said the doctor had an emergency or he couldn’t meet us.

Um, we had to reschedule.

[interviewer] Was she starting to look pregnant ever?

[Connie] She gained weight, but the belly thing didn’t seem to, you know, really show that much, for the months that she claimed she was.

But on Facebook or whatever, and there was pictures.

She came over where I was at. She says, “Feel right here.”

And all of a sudden, the baby kicked.

[Angela] I felt it. My husband felt it.

And… why would you not believe it?

Taylor had them two in her back pocket.

Roger, he went hard on him, you know? Like, “Man, you wanna step up?”

“You gonna take care of this woman and this baby?”

“You know, ’cause it’s yours.”

“My wife felt the baby moving in your wife’s belly.”

I would see a picture of her or something like… “Ah.”

Steph would be like, “Look, I told– Look, she’s skinny this day. Look here.”

Five days ago, she looked like she’s gosh damn nine months pregnant.

It was just some crazy jacked up junk for sure, no doubt.

[Wade] During that summer, time together was very limited.

She never hardly wanted ever me to see her naked or anything because she said she was insecure with her stretch marks.

We never really did anything at all pretty much.

He said, “Man, she won’t let me, you know, touch her, get close with her, anything like that.”

He was like, “Codey, we ain’t had sex in four months, four to five months.”

I said, “Dude, what?”

[tense music plays]

[Wade] She’d go in the bathroom and shut the door, and then she’d spend hours doing just whatever.

[Stephanie] Wade doing his own thing. Like I said, it wasn’t like he’s the type that went to work, came home, sat in the house, and they were together.

Every single day, he was doing something all the time.

There was no space for him to sit down and realize what was going on.

[trackpad clicks]

I mean, she had ultrasounds. She had the fake belly.

She had enough to make it believable.

To her, it was just…

“Whatever I gotta do.”

“Whatever I gotta do to keep this man with me.”

[“I Only Have Eyes for You” by The Flamingos plays]

♪ My love must be a kind of blind love ♪

♪ I can’t see anyone but you ♪

♪ Sha bop, sha bop ♪

♪ Sha bop, sha bop ♪

[keyboard clacking]

♪ Sha bop, sha bop ♪

♪ Sha bop, sha bop… ♪

[Kelly Mae May] I’m a Western photographer.

I do, like, photography, like, for Western people, seniors.

I do newborns, engagements. I do maternity, weddings.

I do do Western weddings only.

Taylor Parker, she reached out to me and wanted me to do a maternity session.

[Kelly Mae reads text message]

“I’m a photographer myself and needing some Western-style pregnancy couple pictures done.”

“I’d love to lay on the horse’s back with my belly in the air and have Wade holding the horse looking at me. Just an idea.”

[spacey music plays]

She was absolutely excited about being pregnant.

I felt like she liked having her pictures taken.

She felt very confident.

She was super happy, excited.

And I did a smoke bomb with my Watusi.

And they acted like they were branding.

It was pink. And it was really neat looking.

She said that she was ready to get back to normal, back to her body.

Like, she had just gained a lot of weight. But she looked really good.

I thought she looked very good.

We actually had a really good time.

We talked. We laughed.

After they left, I even told my husband. I was like, “Oh, my gosh, they’re so nice. She’s so bubbly and friendly.”

Like, “They’re such good people.”

[Stephanie] Now she’s doing this.

And I seen the pictures and of course she looks big and pregnant.

Then my sister-in-law was like, “Oh, my gosh, you don’t know this girl, but her name is McKenzie Bright.”

“She knows Taylor. You need to, like, message her.”

Stephanie had reached out to me and was like, “Hey, I– I need to know some things.”

She said, “Taylor cannot have kids. She’s had a hysterectomy.”

“There’s no way she can have a baby, period.”

“Nothing down there left for…” You know.

I mean…

[somber music plays]

The word got out. All the people that knew… started, you know, within their own inner circles, going, “No, she can’t be pregnant.”

But again, it was kind of her thing to get just far enough away where “I can tell these lies again, but close enough where I’m familiar with the person.”

But she got Reagan and stuck to her.

[laughs]

Stop videoing me!

[Jessica] I can remember it vividly.

We were walking out of the doctor’s office and Reagan gets, um, a message on her phone and she’s just like, “Ugh.”

And I said, “Well, what’s wrong?”

She said, “Oh, people are giving Taylor a hard time, trying to tell her she’s not really pregnant and that, you know, she’s lying.”

And I was like, “Why? Why would they do that?”

She said, “I don’t know, Mama.” She said, “It’s just…”

“You know how people are.”

If somebody needed somebody and nobody was there, Reagan would be there.

[intriguing music plays]

When she first got pregnant with her first daughter, she was 17.

So it was hard for me at first. You know, I was– I was disappointed.

I was furious.

I was– I was upset and I knew that it could change your life and make starting a life a lot harder.

I was over the moon about it ’cause…

[inhales sharply] …we both loved babies.

She’s always wanted to be a mom since she was little.

It was like she was always meant to be a mother. That was her thing.

She was– She was the best mother that– that I think I’ve ever met.

[Jessica] She didn’t care that she was only 17.

That wasn’t in her mind.

She wanted to be successful, of course, but she wanted to be a mother, a successful mother.

Here. It’s an orange.

[Reagan laughs]

[Emily] After she had her baby girl, um, she, like, just came out of her shell completely.

And then she met Homer.

[Jessica] I believe it was in May that she let us know that she was pregnant again.

And we were just over the moon for her and Homer.

And they were so excited. You could just feel it in all of ’em.

I said it’s going to be a girl.

[Reagan] Hey, what’s in my belly? What’s in my belly?

[toddler] Baby. What kind of baby?

[child] Is it a brother or sister?

[toddler] Sister.

[all laugh]

[woman] Yeah!

[Reagan] A sister!

[Connie] By that time, none of us had any idea what she was gonna do.

At some point, she’s gonna have to fake a miscarriage.

I mean, that’s the only way out of this.

She’d say, you know, “I lost the baby today,” and… that would be, you know, the end of it.

But that never came.

[bold, suspenseful music plays]

I heard of the hysterectomy and all that, but I had nothing in writing, nothing from a doctor, nothing to present to him to say, “Look, this is all a lie.”

Well, I would put questions in his mind. He would listen to me.

He would relay the questions I had to her, but she always had a counter.

To everything I presented, she countered it.

So it was a tug-of-war between she and I.

She said, “I just don’t think your mom wants us to be happy.”

“She probably don’t trust me.”

She said, “But I’ll make sure that all this works out in the end.”

[Stephanie] Connie don’t want Wade to be upset with her, so she kind of backed off, and I was like, “Well, I don’t care.”

I ended up just saying, “All this stuff that you have told me has been a lie.”

When I hit her with everything is when she said, “Well, let me tell you how all this happened.”

She blamed her mother for all of the things that she’d done.

[phone chimes]

[phone chimes]

None of it made sense. If she didn’t want you to be pregnant, why would she hire somebody to fake an ultrasound?

[phone chimes]

But everything I would say, she had something to say, even though she sounded like a… idiot.

[birds chirp]

I had talked to somebody that knew Taylor’s aunt.

The aunt gave me Taylor’s mom’s number.

[tense music plays]

[phone rings]

And her mom said, “I’ve been waiting on this phone call.”

[pulsing, moody music plays]

She said, “Taylor cannot have kids. She’s had a hysterectomy.”

“No, we don’t have money.”

“There is no inheritance money.”

“There is no money at all anywhere.”

I called Connie. I’m like, “I talked to her mom.”

It wasn’t anything new, that she’d always, always been a liar.

That’s when I said, “Why are you not telling Wade or somebody?”

And that’s when the granddaughter came in play.

She was terrified, because if she were to tell, Taylor would pull that granddaughter away, and she would never, ever be able to see that little girl again.

She was scared to say anything.

I had called him.

I said, “Wade, she is not pregnant. She cannot have kids.”

And he said, “Stephanie, yes, she can.”

“Her mom’s lying to you.” Like, “Her mom’s crazy.”

Um, “She does all this stuff. She’s, like, crazy.”

I’m like, “Wade, no, you don’t understand.” Like…

“Taylor was in the hospital for this. She had a hysterectomy.”

And he was like, “Her mom’s just telling you–”

“There’s no belly there. She has no stomach.”

He was talking, I was talking over him.

“Man, all this is bullshit. This bitch is fucking you, dude.”

“She ain’t got this money. She… I mean, this is a fucking scandal.”

And I told him, I said– I started– I kinda got teary-eyed, you know?

‘Cause I was one of his closest friends, you know?

I just– I ain’t about the drama.

I don’t care what other folks do. I’m– Nah-uh.

I kind of just washed my hands, you know.

Him and Codey kind of… They quit speaking after that.

[dog barks in distance]

I’m like…

“Now what?”

[Taylor] Look at it, trying to walk.

[exclaims happily]

Oh, my goodness.

[cow lows]

She’s not wanting to let it suckle.

[cow lows]

Uh-oh.

[anxious music plays]

[keyboard clacking]

[McKenzie] And my mind constantly wandered and just raced and raced and raced with…

“What is she gonna do?”

[Tiffany] We’re all watching this house like hawks.

Like, “What– What is gonna happen? What is she gonna do?”

As the time went on, it got closer and closer to her “due date,” and it didn’t happen.

[Wade] She had a lot of factors of why she could have missed her due date.

She wasn’t eating right, or it might have been not ready yet, or the baby might be too small, but I didn’t really know what to believe.

[keyboard clacking]

We all knew that there was no way for her to have a miscarriage anymore.

[Dr. Mason] We felt that she had to come up with a baby somehow.

So for the safety of the rest of our patients and our nursery, we did alert the hospital to be on higher alert, what was called Code Pink.

We really thought that, if anything, she would just try to steal a baby.

[Taylor] ♪ Rain, baby, rain! ♪

[Connie] And at that point, she went ten months, and I thought, “That doesn’t happen either.”

“Never heard of that in my life.”

[Tiffany] I lived across from Wade, and I had taken pictures of her and Wade out in the driveway.

She didn’t look pregnant for being ten months pregnant, you know?

I mean, it started to become not believable.

And that’s when all of these weird events started happening.

[insects chirp]

[keyboard clacking]

[Wade] I’d done taken off leave from my work, and she had scheduled an appointment with Mount Pleasant.

She wakes me up and says she smells smoke.

So I get up and walk outside, and the whole underside of my house is on fire.

[dramatic music plays]

So I just took my water hose, put what fire was left burning out.

She was gonna have the baby that day, and I think Wade even took off work.

So it got down to, “I’ve gotta do something.”

There was no doubt in my mind that… I mean, I knew she did that.

I said, “I’m gonna sleep on the couch for now.”

Then whenever I got up about 7:00, she said, “Hey, I know you’re probably upping to get ready to go, but we can’t go to Mount Pleasant this morning.”

“There’s been a bomb threat called in.”

[man] Mount Pleasant Police Department.

[woman] I just received a caller, and he said there is a bomb in the hospital.

[man] Okay, so a male subject called and said there was a bomb in the hospital?

[woman] Yes, sir. He said…

[Wade] “There is no way, Taylor, that there’s a bomb threat.”

And she said, “No, look on Facebook. It’s all over Facebook.”

[Connie] And she said, “They had a bomb threat this morning.” [chuckles]

There was a bomb threat. Sure was.

‘Cause you called it in!

[dramatic music plays]

I worried about his safety.

All I cared about was him at that point, and his well-being.

I said, “Do you love her?” “Well, I care about her.”

I said, “But do you love her?” “Well, not really. I just, you know…”

And I said, “Then get her gone.”

Found out later, he really pinned her down, and he really got harsh with her, like, “Enough already.”

[Wade] I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her that mad before.

She said, “I’m tired of your family not siding with us on me having your baby.”

“I’d be dang if they want to call me a liar and say I’m not pregnant.”

“I’m gonna show everybody that I’m pregnant.”

“I’m gonna bring a kid home.”

Exactly what she said.

[keyboard clacking]

[ominous music plays]

[keyboard clacking]

[Jessica] On that Wednesday, Reagan and Taylor had had a girls’ day.

They went to Starbucks apparently and just kind of hung out.

[phone chimes]

And then on the 8th, Taylor had come back over to talk with Reagan.

Apparently, she was just coming to visit.

She was expecting to be going in to be induced the next day.

And Reagan felt like Taylor was probably overwhelmed with everything.

And she was trying to be that one person there for her when nobody else was.

[suspenseful music plays]

[keyboard clacking]

[Wade] I got dressed that morning about 3:30 or 4:00.

We had a pen full of hogs that I had done gathered up or bought from other trappers.

The plan was we were both supposed to go load the hogs up, go drop ’em off, and then we were gonna swing down to the Idabel Hospital.

I said, “Are you ready to leave?”

And she said, “Well, I’m not feeling just too great.”

“I think I’m gonna let you leave with the hogs, and then I’m going to meet you at the hospital.”

I said, “Well, that wasn’t the plan. I think we both need to go together.”

“This is a big deal.”

She said, “Nah, we need to get them sold. That’s too much money to turn down.”

So I didn’t argue with her no more.

I went and loaded the hogs up, and I left.

[suspenseful music intensifies]

It probably took me four and a half hours or something to get up there from my house.

I pulled in, and he told me, he said, “I didn’t order– I didn’t order no hogs today.”

I said, “There’s no way. You texted me this morning.”

[phone chimes]

He said, “I didn’t text nobody.”

I said, “You didn’t text me from this number?” I pulled out my phone.

He said, “That’s not my number.”

I said, “Did you not talk to Taylor about some hogs?”

He said, “Yeah, weeks ago.”

“I quit texting her.” And he said, “I didn’t follow up with nothing.”

I said, “Well, who in the world would’ve texted me from this number then?”

He said, “Man, I don’t know.”

[telephone rings]

[Jessica] I went to work.

I was in my office, and Homer called me.

He said, “Miss Jessica, have you talked to Reagan this morning?”

I said, “No.”

He said, “Well, she’s texting me, but it’s… It doesn’t… It’s not like her.”

And I was like, “Well, what do you mean?”

He said, “Well, after she stopped texting, I’ve been trying to call her, and she won’t answer.”

I said, “Is she at work?” He said, “They haven’t heard from her.”

[Marcus] It was my day off from work. My friend Chris had come over.

Uh, I mean, it just seemed like a normal day.

And then Jessica called me and said that Reagan wasn’t answering.

I said, “Well, we’re fixing to go to town anyway. I’ll head that way.”

We were about halfway there, and she called me back, and said our grandbaby’s not at the daycare.

She sounded frantic.

So she headed to the house.

[Jessica] As I’m getting to Reagan’s road and turn onto it, I see their house, and the garage door is open.

Well, that worried me, because they never leave their garage door open.

As I get out of my car, I’m walking, and I see these little red streaks.

And I thought, “Well, the dog must have hurt its foot.”

And so that’s what I was seeing.

And I kind of opened the door, and I saw a bloody footprint.

And I shut the door.

And as I kinda stepped back, and I thought, “No, if she’s in there and she’s hurt or, you know, she can’t answer me, I need to go in.”

[woman] New Boston, 911. What’s your emergency?

[Jessica wailing]

[woman] Ma’am. Ma’am?

[Jessica wails]

Help me. My daughter’s been murdered.

[woman] Okay, where are you located at?

[Jessica] At… [beeps] Street. [beeps]

[woman] In New Boston?

[Jessica] Yeah.

[woman] What happened?

[Jessica] I don’t know. Somebody got in her house.

She’s dead!

[woman] Okay.

[Jessica] She’s dead! [echoes]

[car door closes]

[Taylor] No, I can’t. There’s something wrong with her.

[trooper] What’s wrong, ma’am? I had my baby.

And I’m trying to get to Idabel Hospital where my husband–

[trooper] Idabel? Yeah, my husband’s up there.

He was delivering hogs right outside of Idabel.

That’s why I was trying to get to him. Can you call my husband?

[trooper] Yes.

[man on phone] How old’s the baby, ma’am?

The baby’s only, like, maybe 35 minutes old.

[trooper] I’m gonna give the phone back to her.

[dispatch] She was flying down the road. You stopped her or what?

[trooper] She was driving down the road, passing on the shoulder.

She had her hazards on. She ran over a bird.

It’s still on– uh, in the grille here.

[eerie music plays]

Did a name come back on that 27? Her name’s Taylor.

I don’t have her last name.

[dispatch] Uh, the car is r– registered to Wade Griffin.

[trooper] I think he’s already in Oklahoma, uh, working.

So he’s already…

[Wade] She called me.

She said she’s having the baby on the side of the road.

How quick could I get to the hospital?

[Wade on phone] Hello?

Where you at?

[Wade on phone] I’m trying– I’m trying to get these, um, these hogs moved.

What’s up?

We’re– We’re going to the hospital. We’re going to Titus.

[Wade] All right, well, let me finish what I’m doing. I’ll call you right back.

Okay?

[Wade on phone] All right. Bye.

I’m sorry.

I was like, “This has got to be a joke.”

[medic] So you was– you was on your way to Idabel to have the baby?

[Taylor] Yeah.

[medic] Okay.

[Taylor blubbering]

[medic] Okay. It’s all right.

Just relax, darling. [speaks indistinctly]

[siren wails]

[man speaks indistinctly on radio]

[Jessica sobbing] Reagan! Reagan!

When we pull up, Jessica’s in the driveway.

She’s on her hands and knees, and she’s just screaming.

You– You know something’s… bad, bad, wrong.

She’s hysterical.

I– I– I try to talk to her, and she can’t tell me anything.

She can’t say anything.

Marcus is like, “What’s wrong?”

And I said, “Just don’t go in there. Do not. Don’t go in.”

And, of course, I gotta know.

[gasps softly]

Marcus opens the door, and he backs up, and I can remember his face.

And… it’s just pure terror.

And– And I lost it.

I– I started hollering. I don’t know what I said.

It– It–

Worst thing you can imagine. Worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

I’m still on the phone with 911, and we realized her daughter was in the house.

She’s three years old.

[Marcus] So I head back to the door and then started calling her name, screaming it.

Uh, about the fourth or fifth time, I heard something, and– and she finally spoke.

I turned around and looked at Chris.

I was gonna have to step over her to get to her.

Uh…

And I knew I couldn’t do it.

So I go back in to the kitchen area, and I had to step over Reagan and– and walk through the whole… scene.

And I’m looking in the rooms as I go back, and I get to the very last bedroom.

And Reagan’s daughter is sitting, and when I walk into the room, she reflexes and draws the covers up.

And then she notices, recognized me.

And she jumped up and just ran and jumped off the bed.

I had to catch her.

About that time, the police officers pulled up.

I meet the first one, and I’m like, “Listen, she’s pregnant.”

“I don’t know…”

“I don’t know if the baby survived or not, but she’s pregnant.”

“I don’t know how long this has been. You know, just please know that.”

[cop 1] We need to know whether the baby’s in there or not.

‘Cause there’s an awful lot of blood everywhere.

[cop 2] The only way we can know that is to– is to roll her over.

[cop 1] Okay.

[cop 3] There’s no baby in there.

[cop 2] No.

[cop 3] No. There’s no baby in there.

[ethereal music plays]

[cop 1] So she was pregnant?

[man] Yes, 36 weeks.

My brother called me and said, “Hey, there’s some stuff on Facebook and it said that the baby had been taken from her.”

“New Boston Expecting Mother Murdered. Baby Cut from Womb.”

That’s how we found out that that’s what happened to her.

[click tongue] Anyway…

[cop 1] She’s in there.

She refuses to have a vaginal check to make sure she’s not hemorrhaging.

They’ve done an ultrasound and HCG, and it doesn’t show that she’s been pregnant.

They have the placenta.

Where is she?

[cop 1] She is in the room.

You’re not letting her leave? No.

[on phone] Can I help you?

[cop 1] This is…

This is a big deal.

[cop 1] Yeah.

[nurse on phone] Okay, yes. Are you ready?

[cop 1] If there’s anything you need to talk to us about, you can.

I don’t know what everybody wants me to talk about.

You gave birth to this child?

Yes. I–

[cop 1] We’re just making sure.

Did I do something wrong for them bringing me over here?

[cop 1] What did you have? A boy or a girl?

A girl.

[cop 1] A girl. Okay.

Picked out a name yet?

Clancy Gaile.

Clancy Gaile.

[cop 1] Clancy Gaile.

[doctor] Hi.

[cop 1] All right.

Let’s see.

[Chad] So we’ll jump out.

[doctor] Sit you up.

All right. Well, let me have them sit you up there where I can see what I’m doing.

So it surely doesn’t look like a baby came out of there.

I didn’t– It doesn’t look like she had a baby.

[cop 1] It doesn’t? No.

[cop 1] Okay.

Does not look like she had a baby down there.

[cop 2] Get ready.

[somber music plays]

[Taylor sighs]

Hey, Taylor. So what happened?

Nothing happened.

You didn’t give birth.

We’re past all this nonsense about “I wasn’t there.”

“I didn’t kill nobody.” We’re past all of that.

We know it. We know you did it.

The bottom line is these cases are actually pretty simple.

Murder cases are pretty simple.

You have a who, what, when, where, and why.

[Wade] When I got there, I asked ’em at the front desk, I said, “You know where I can find Taylor Parker at?”

And she just kind of looked at me for a second and then paused and then pointed down the hall, and she said, “Right down here to the right.”

And I walked down there to the end of the hall and hung a right.

That’s whenever there was three officers walking towards me, come up to me, ask me was I Wade Griffin.

They said, “We’re gonna restrain you for a little bit and take you in to ask you some questions.”

[Marcus] Somebody says that there’s someone in custody in Idabel, Oklahoma.

[handcuffs clicking]

One of our friends said, “Hey, do you know Taylor Parker?”

And I’m like, “Homer, do you know Taylor Parker?”

And he’s like, “Yeah, she was just at our house last night.”

I said, “Well, they’re saying that it’s her.”

He’s like, “There’s no way.”

He said, “She was just at our house last night. They were talking.”

And I heard Jessica say that she was the photographer at the wedding.

[Jessica] Sure enough, it was her.

[cop 1] Watch your toes.

Under no circumstance is she to have her phone or purse.

[cop 1] Okay. Okay. All right?

She’s to be, uh… separated from her boyfriend who’s down there.

You know the baby’s dead?

[cop 1] Yeah, I heard. Okay.

[Chad] Hey, are you Wade? Yes, sir.

Hey, man. I’m sorry you had to wait.

I’ve been non-stop phone calls and everything else.

Wade, uh…

Taylor’s in jail.

In jail? Mm-hmm.

Best we can tell, um… looks like she killed a woman and cut her baby out of her.

And then passed it off as being hers.

Do what? Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Is the baby alive?

No. No, it died up here.

Think they said they got some pulses, but yeah, it died.

[melancholic music plays]

I didn’t really have no words for nothing at that point.

[sighs heavily]

Well, I can honestly say my family was right.

‘Cause they’ve been calling it the whole time, and I took up for Taylor.

Oh, was– What have they been saying? That she wasn’t pregnant?

Mm-hmm. Yep.

[voice breaking] I don’t even know how to explain it.

Just betrayal from the lies, everything.

I never, ever wanted anything like that to ever happen. It was…

It was unimaginable, what she did.

I left the police station in Oklahoma and then come home, and there was several state troopers at the house.

[trooper] Do we have your consent to search the property?

[dog barks]

[objects clatter]

[detective] Tell me about the– your house. You had a nursery set up at the house?

[Taylor] Yeah, we bought a crib and clothes and diapers.

[detective] Who bought all that?

[Taylor] Me and Wade.

[detective] Okay. Was he excited about the baby coming?

[Taylor] No.

[detective] Why not?

[Taylor] He’s never been excited about it.

[sprawling, forlorn music plays]

[Wade] It was all going through my head about everything from day one.

Everything… was a lie.

Very, uh, difficult story to, uh, report, even read to you tonight.

[reporter 1] A small east Texas community is grieving the loss

of a New Boston mother.

I said, “I hope to God… this is not Taylor.”

[reporter 2] A female suspect was taken into custody in Oklahoma.

I just froze. And I said, “I think I know who that is.”

“That was probably her. Do you think that was her? Surely not.”

The pit in my stomach just fell to the bottom as far as it could go.

It was just… It was just… A– My whole insides just sunk.

Right away.

Uh, even before the news of who it was, we– we knew who it was.

Agents say the suspect cut the baby out of her mother’s stomach and then tried to claim the baby as her own.

[reporter 3] 27-year-old Taylor Parker was stopped Friday morning by Texas troopers in De Kalb. 21-year-old Reagan Hancock and her unborn child did not survive.

It was almost impossible to believe because…

I had no idea someone whom we all had met was capable of– of taking my sister’s life.

It was very overwhelming to have to try and process the unknown.

Father, today again I come to you lifting the family of this young lady up, and this child.

Father, I pray for Homer above all of ’em, Father, for Homer’s wife, Father.

When she went to be with you, a part of him died this day, Father.

[Emily] My heart broke for… me and my family but also for Homer.

[melancholic music plays]

I lost a sister, but he lost his forever person.

[inaudible]

You know, all the questions you can ask yourself when someone is killed is, “Why?”

[tense music plays]

Everybody around here knew that she’s the one that done it.

There was no doubt in that.

In my opinion, the trial wasn’t for guilt or innocence, it was for death penalty or not.

Today was all about the lies prosecutors say Taylor Parker told.

[reporter 2] Today in court, Taylor’s first husband confirmed that she used to practice other people’s handwriting and signatures.

[reporter 1] Today the jurors heard how Taylor Parker went to different doctors, trying to get one to diagnose her with the illnesses she was claiming to have.

[reporter 2] …argued that Taylor Parker is a liar and a master manipulator…

[reporter 1] A real estate agent said she tried to pull off a $20 million real estate deal.

We didn’t know until after the murder that all of the people that we were trying to make contact with didn’t exist.

[Rusty] “Shelly Linx with Shell Oil.”

“Blake Lawington, that’s my lawyer.”

“Uncle Butch.”

Everybody’s just profiled in there way too conveniently.

[male voice] Hey, Taylor, I was giving you a call.

Got a voicemail from Angela that said that apparently…

From multiple phones to voice-altering apparatus.

We just couldn’t believe what we were hearing.

The multiple phones that she would text herself from, the names she would use, the people, just all of the lies.

I still can’t understand how someone would think that this was gonna work.

[reporter] The defense called Parker’s mother Shona Prior to the stand,

and she testified for a little over an hour.

[Lindsey] Everything got revealed.

Pardon my language, like, “What the fuck?”

Like, how can one person keep up with that many lies?

I would have to carry around a three-ring binder.

Everything was a lie. Everything was a lie.

[sobs] I remember pushing her off me.

And she grabbed my hair and hit me. [detective sighs]

And she said, “You need to wake up. You are lying.”

[reporter] Videos of her police interviews were shown to the court Wednesday, and the investigator who conducted those interviews testified that Parker told wildly different stories.

I did not do that!

[detective] Okay.

I would admit to something that I did do.

Okay. Well, I’m just telling you, the evidence is there, it’s linked back to you.

What the fuck?!

I’m trying to understand why you did it that day.

I don’t wanna talk about this anymore. I really don’t. [laughs]

I understand. I don’t know. I don’t…

This is– This is difficult.

[sobs] I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

All she did was lay there and talk to me when I cut her.

When you cut her? Yes.

And what did she talk about?

She just said to take… She was screaming, “Take her out!”

What does that mean?

Take the baby out. Take her out.

“Take her out.” She was screaming at me to take her out.

“Her” being the baby. She was like, “I’m finished. I’m dying.”

Okay. She was talking to me.

All right.

[sobs] But y’all can paint whatever picture you want.

You can’t tell me this woman said, “Take my baby and leave,” and expect me to believe that.

I was certified as the expert in OB-GYN for the trial, and, uh, even I kind of broke down on the– on the stand because of how she did it.

She actually cut behind the uterus to cut the baby out.

She flipped the uterus entirely forward after cutting into the patient’s belly.

It had to be extremely painful.

I would not know how anybody could ever do that.

[detective] You got Wade out of town.

You made sure Reagan was at home.

You went to her house with a diaper bag and a scalpel.

You got your baby, Wade believed you, you proved all these people wrong that said you were lying for the last ten months.

And you had your “aha” moment… at the expense of that.

[clock ticking]

Can I please go to the bathroom?

[gentle music plays]

[reporter] Convicted killer Taylor Parker entered the courtroom today with her fate in the hands of a Bowie County jury.

When court was over, Parker was sentenced to death row for the brutal deaths of Reagan Hancock and removing Hancock’s unborn child, Braxlynn.

The last order given by Judge Tidwell was “Take her to death row.”

A heavy, heavy burden feels lifted.

I feel like now we can start trying to heal.

[Emily] I’m just… I’m overwhelmed with happiness it’s over.

Because she has been such a burden in our life for so long now that I haven’t been able to really think about my sister without thinking about her.

[reporter] Taylor Parker becomes the seventh woman on death row in Texas.

Parker is still being processed at the state prison in Gatesville before she is sent to the Mountain View Unit to join six other women awaiting execution.

[Wade] The whole point behind it all, I really don’t know, but…

I guess she was hoping one day I’d finally…

I’d finally tell her, you know, that I loved her, but I never– I never did.

Come on, come on, come on. Come on.

[continues calling cows]

[Connie] I watched him cry… and cry.

I love him dearly, but I really wish he had listened to me.

People were so angry at what had happened, and I didn’t blame ’em.

They avoid him.

They– They turn and walk the other way, and it’s hard.

It’s everywhere he goes.

It never goes away, never will.

[forlorn music plays]

[Codey] After all that happened, I went over there, and right when we’d seen each other, we…

He… [sighs] He said, “Man, I should have believed you.”

And I said, “Shit, that’s beside the point.”

“We ain’t worried about that now.” You know?

I think everybody that was intimately involved with that situation feels some guilt that will never go away.

I wouldn’t be able to look at her mother in the face.

The shame wouldn’t let me. I’d be shameful to do that.

I couldn’t do it.

[Angela] The people around that has been involved in this, we kind of want to avoid each other.

Because you don’t want to relive that memory.

But it’s there, and it’s…

It never goes away.

[Jessica] It is so hard to put into words what losing a child is like.

You know, as a mother, that’s– Sh–

A– A child is physically part of you, physically.

You know, not just emotionally, not just this little thing you raised.

They grew inside of you.

And, um, oh, man, the day she died…

I’ve never felt anything like that.

Um…

It was– It–

Half of me died. Half of me died.

And, uh, it’s not coming back.

The Jessica that I used to be… [sobs] …is gone, and the part that’s left is a part that I never knew was there.

You know, when I found her in the days and weeks after that, it was like I had to tell myself, “Yes, she was real. Yes, she was here.”

You know?

[voice breaks] It wasn’t my imagination.

[solemn music plays]

[sniffles]

[Emily] Me and my husband got married on… [sniffles]

…her wedding day, and…

I was scared to hire a photographer.

When everything first happened in 2020, I prayed she’d go to hell.

I really did.

That’s what I wanted, and I was strong believe on that.

And a preacher told me…

“Everyone can be forgiven.”

“Just not by us.”

Her just answering to God is all I’m asking at this point.

If she does ask God for forgiveness, I pray that she means it.

Because… for a demon like her, a demon like Taylor, hell would be easy.

[solemn music continues]

[music ends]