After Taylor Parker’s crimes were broken down in Netflix’s Maternal Instinct, director Jessica Dimmock revealed why she believes the killer was able to successfully trick people around her into believing she was pregnant with Wade Griffin’s child for so long.
After her alleged due date of September 22, 2020, came and went, Parker, 33, killed her pregnant friend Reagen Hancock-Simmons on October 9, 2020, performed a C-section and fled the scene with the baby girl that Hancock-Simmons, 21, planned to name Braxlynn Sage.
“Jessica [Brookes], Reagan’s mother, says at the beginning of the film that in a small town you can trust easily. And [Parker] really exploited that sense of trust and used that to her advantage,” Dimmock told Netflix’s Tudum when asked why Parker was able to fool her loved ones for so long.
Dimmock added that she “found it shocking that she was so bold” and chose to fake a pregnancy “in a place where everyone knew each other, because people were talking — and their sleuthing was working.”
“They were finding each other and they were finding her relatives,” the director continued of Parker. “But she was very good at keeping people away from each other. She had an ability to tell two different lies about the same circumstance to two different people so they would not trust one another.”
Dimmock also speculated why the people in Parker’s lives may have not pushed her for answers even if they suspected she was lying. “There might be a culture of not wanting to rock the boat, or people feeling it wasn’t their business, that she was relying on — and it didn’t work because some people made it their business,” she said.
After Parker fled the home, she called 911 to claim that she had given birth to Braxlynn Sage. She was then taken to the hospital, where doctors determined that she had not given birth.
After Brookes found Hancock-Simmons dead at her home, police linked Parker to the murder and she was questioned before she was arrested that same day.
Parker’s case went to trial in 2022, and she was found guilty of capital murder and kidnapping in connection to the deaths of Hancock-Simmons and Braxlynn Sage. She was sentenced to death and is currently the youngest woman on death row in Texas as she awaits her execution.
Dimmock also spoke to the outlet about why she chose to not interview Parker for Maternal Instinct.
“For so much of this story, we’re on Taylor’s ride from other people’s perspective. I never got a sense from any of our reporting that she acknowledges what she did, that she’s remorseful, or that she can be truthful about it,” she said. “To give her any extra time to spin and lie just did not feel like the film I wanted to make. I wanted to hear from all of the people whose lives she damaged and broke forever, and not give her any more room to talk.”
