Since the Taylor Parker documentary landed on Netflix earlier this month, millions of viewers have been left with one question: why is she still alive?
Taylor Parker, 33, murdered her pregnant friend Reagan Simmons-Hancock in 2020, stabbed her more than 100 times, cut her unborn baby from her womb and tried to pass the child off as her own.
She was sentenced to death in November 2022 and is currently held at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville, Texas, the state’s female death row facility. She is the youngest woman currently on death row in Texas.
But she has no execution date.
How Texas executions actually work
Texas does not set an execution date until a prisoner has exhausted every stage of the appeals process. Parker’s direct appeals are now spent, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld her conviction and death sentence in November 2025, and the US Supreme Court declined to hear her case in May 2026.
But there is still one major stage left: habeas corpus review. This is a separate strand of the appeals process that examines whether a conviction was constitutionally sound. It commonly takes several more years to work through the courts.
Only once that process concludes, and only if she loses, would a trial court in Bowie County set an execution date.
10 months of deception leading up to the horrifying crime
Parker had a hysterectomy in 2015 and was left unable to have children. In 2019 she began a relationship with Wade Griffin and within months she lied to him that she was pregnant.
What followed was 10 months of elaborate deception: silicone pregnancy bellies, a staged gender reveal, fake sonogram images and forged financial documents. Her supposed due date came and went with no baby.
On October 9, 2020, Parker arrived at the home of Reagan Simmons-Hancock, a 21-year-old who was 36 weeks pregnant. Reagan’s mother found her later that day after she stopped answering her phone.
Investigators described the scene as one of the most violent they had ever encountered. Reagan had suffered more than 100 stab wounds and blunt force injuries. Her unborn daughter Braxlynn Sage Hancock had been cut from her womb.
Less than 30 minutes later, Parker called 911 from a highway claiming she had just given birth on the roadside. A state trooper pulled her over and found her performing CPR on the newborn.
Doctors at the hospital found no evidence she had given birth. Braxlynn was pronounced dead. Parker was arrested that afternoon.
Could Parker avoid execution entirely?
It is possible, though not guaranteed. The habeas corpus process occasionally results in sentences being reduced or convictions being overturned on constitutional grounds.
Parker’s lawyers could raise new arguments at this stage that were not available during direct appeal.
For comparison, the most high-profile upcoming female execution in the US is Christa Pike in Tennessee, scheduled for September 30, 2026, which would make her the first woman executed by any US state in more than 200 years. Parker’s case is a Texas state matter, placing her in a separate queue entirely.
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