When a Texas state trooper pulled over a woman driving erratically on the highway in 2020, she claimed she had just given birth — but her story didn’t add up. The investigation that followed uncovered a twisted and unthinkable criminal case.
The documentary Maternal Instinct, now streaming, unravels one woman’s web of deception and the tragedy it brought upon those who trusted her most. The film is directed by Jessica Dimmock and produced by Joshua Levine, Samantha DeMaria, and Jon Bardin.
Here’s everything to know about the documentary.
The film follows the story of Taylor Parker, a young woman claiming to come from a wealthy family, who fell for Wade Griffin, a local hog trapper in a small East Texas town. Their relationship appeared perfect, and within months, she was pregnant, proudly showing off her baby bump all over social media. As her due date approached, however, questions around her pregnancy mounted, and her family, her devoted partner, and her wider community began to voice their doubts. But when the shocking truth finally surfaced, it brought consequences too horrifying for anyone to have imagined.
Take a first look at Maternal Instinct in the trailer at the top of the page.
The documentary film premiered on Netflix on June 12. Stream it now.
Shortly after her arrival to her new rural East Texas community, Taylor Parker instantly made an impression on the people she met. By her own account, she came from a wealthy family with oil money in the Sulphur River bottoms. Someday, she said, she’d be a millionaire, counting on a vast inheritance from her grandmother. But she was locked in a bitter feud with her mother, who she said stood between her and the money. Those who got to know Taylor said she was charming and had a clear sense of what she wanted. Then, in July 2019, she met Wade Griffin, a hog trapper, at a local rodeo — and she made sure he noticed her.
In October, just three months after they met, Taylor moved in with Wade. She had two children from previous relationships: a daughter who would spend weekdays with them and a son who was rarely around. But she was focused on building an extravagant future with her new beau. Almost immediately, the spending began — cars, cattle, off-road vehicles, an $87,000 truck, and a $4 million cash offer on a ranch in Oklahoma. Wade was swept up in the vision she was painting. “She just shined,” he recalls in the documentary. “She just kind of painted a pretty picture kind of for the future.”
Not long after moving in, Taylor told Wade she was pretty sure she was pregnant. After she came back from a doctor’s appointment with paperwork confirming the pregnancy, she began texting friends to share the good news. “I like to take stuff slow,” Wade says in the documentary, “not just start jumping from dating one month to ‘I’m already pregnant.’” But Taylor was already eagerly planning their next chapter.
A hardworking hog trapper, Wade had long dreamed of owning a big ranch. When Taylor came into his life, she seemed ready to make that dream possible. His friends and family liked her. “Anything I asked her to do, she would do. She did pull her weight,” Wade recalls in the documentary. And when she told him she planned to make an offer on the ranch, he wanted to believe it, even if something nagged at him. “Something [made me question],” he says. “This is all happening way too fast.”
It was Wade’s mother, Connie, who first supported his suspicions. Piece by piece, Taylor’s story began to fall apart.
Connie and Wade’s friend Stephanie Ott began quietly making calls — to clinics, to labs — trying to verify what Taylor had told them. But they were stymied by health privacy laws, and every time they seemed close to an answer, Taylor had a response ready. “She always had a counter,” Connie says in the doc. “Everything I presented, she countered it.” But they weren’t the only ones with doubts.
Parker’s former friends from another town, McKenzie “Kenzie” Bright and Abby Bell, who are also interviewed in the documentary, describe a pattern of manufactured health concerns that long preceded the pregnancy. Taylor previously told her friends she’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, was in treatment for cancer, had a brain tumor, and had suffered a stroke. “After it kept happening and happening and happening over and over, I started being like, ‘Maybe she’s not really sick,’” Abby says in the doc.
Kenzie and Abby grew estranged from Taylor after she became fixated on Kenzie’s own pregnancy — wanting to plan the gender reveal and even asking to log in to her pregnancy-tracking app to monitor progress. “I had to cut her off,” Kenzie says in the doc. By the time she moved to Simms, they surmised, Taylor had gotten far enough away from the people who knew her best to start the lies all over again.
What those in her new community couldn’t have known was that Taylor had undergone a hysterectomy years earlier, making pregnancy impossible. When Stephanie finally tracked down Taylor’s mother directly, the answer was unambiguous. “‘I’ve been waiting on this phone call,’” Stephanie recalls her saying. “‘Taylor cannot have kids. She’s had a hysterectomy. …And there is no money at all anywhere.’”
By then, Taylor had missed her September 22 due date. Court evidence would later reveal Taylor’s online searches for “order cheap pregnancy silicone belly,” “newborn adoptions,” “how to find a birth mother,” and “video of c-section.”
Reagan Simmons-Hancock, 21, was from the nearby town of New Boston, Texas. To those who knew her, Reagan was warm and inclusive — the kind of person who made everyone feel welcome.
Taylor had first crossed paths with Reagan in September 2019, when she photographed Reagan’s wedding as part of a side business she’d started. Reagan’s family recalled that Taylor inserted herself into the celebration, appearing in wedding selfies and acting like a friend. After the wedding, the two began to see each other more frequently, and Reagan welcomed her into her life. According to friends and family interviewed in the documentary, Reagan even expressed sympathy when people questioned Taylor’s pregnancy.
By October 2020, Reagan herself was 35 weeks pregnant, and on October 7, she and Taylor spent a girls’ day together. But when Reagan stopped answering her phone on October 9, her mother, Jessica — who is also interviewed in the documentary — grew frantic and headed to the house. The garage door was open. Inside, she found streaks of blood and a horrifying scene. And further into the house, Reagan’s three-year-old daughter was found alone in the back bedroom, hiding under the covers.
On October 9, 2020, Taylor called 911 from a highway outside De Kalb, Texas, claiming she had just given birth and that the baby wasn’t breathing. When state troopers arrived, they found her performing CPR on a newborn. She told them she had been on her way to meet her husband at a hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma.
At the hospital, doctors found no evidence that Taylor had given birth. Meanwhile, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) agent Chad Dansby began interviewing her at her bedside. Back in New Boston, Reagan’s mother had already called 911 from Reagan’s house, where investigators found evidence of a brutal attack — Reagan had suffered 15 stab wounds and 98 incised wounds, and her unborn baby had been cut out of her.
Taylor was arrested at the hospital and charged with murder, and Wade was brought in for questioning. An OSBI agent told him what investigators had uncovered. “I didn’t really have no words for nothing at that point,” Wade recalls in the documentary. “It was unimaginable, what she did.”
Parker was eventually convicted of capital murder, and a month later she was given the death penalty.
In 2025, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Taylor Parker’s capital murder conviction and sentence. She continues to pursue her remaining appeals.
She is currently the youngest woman on death row in Texas.
Disturbing and gut-wrenching, Maternal Instinct unravels a woman’s years-long web of deception and the grisly murder it led to, told through the voices of those who lived through it in a small Texas town.
Maternal Instinct is now streaming.
