Texas: Man convicted of killing pregnant woman to steal fetus

Taylor Parker, who is facing death row, tricked her boyfriend and family into believing she was having a baby for months, discussing her – fictitious – pregnancy on social media and going so far as to buy a silicone fake belly. In fact, her uterus was removed so she could no longer have children.

On October 9, 2020, Taylor Parker approached a 21-year-old woman named Regan Simmons-Hancock, who was in the last months of her pregnancy, and stabbed her more than a hundred times. After cutting open her stomach to extract her fetus, she left the victim’s 3-year-old daughter sleeping in another room.

Taylor Parker was arrested shortly after driving her car, with her newborn baby in her lap, about fifteen kilometers from the scene of the murder. She assured that she gave birth. The child, who was hospitalized, did not survive.

The trial, which opened in New Boston, a small town east of Dallas, is expected to last at least a month.

On Tuesday, an investigator said weeks before the murder, Taylor Parker began looking for pregnant women at specialty stores or maternity hospitals, local TV station KTAL reported. She had made appointments herself at some clinics and was seen there, he said.

She would have watched several videos of childbirth and caesarean section just before the facts set in. According to KTAL, the investigator said he believed she was posing as a midwife so she could visit pregnant women.