MATERNAL INSTINCT

She faked a pregnancy for ten months. she spent one morning making it true

On the morning of October 9, 2020, Taylor Parker drove forty miles through the piney backroads of northeast Texas with a weapon, a plan, and a story ready for anyone who asked. By afternoon, twenty-one-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock was dead in her own home, her full-term baby girl stolen from her womb. Hours later, a Texas State Trooper pulled over a blood-soaked woman on Highway 82 cradling an infant that was not hers, spinning a lie she believed she could walk away from.

She was wrong.

Maternal Instinct is the chilling, meticulously researched true story of one of the most disturbing crimes in modern American history. It is the story of a ten-month fake pregnancy sustained through silicone prosthetics, forged ultrasounds, and staged gender reveal parties. It is the story of a small Texas town that trusted the wrong woman. And it is, above all, the story of Reagan Simmons-Hancock and her daughter Braxlynn Sage, two lives extinguished before justice could find them.

Inside this book you will discover:

• - The full story of Taylor Parker's ten-month fake pregnancy and how she fooled everyone around her
• - The chilling details of how investigators connected two crime scenes forty miles apart in a single afternoon
• - The psychological profile of fetal abduction and why experts say this crime follows a pattern hiding in plain sight
• - The dramatic two-week capital murder trial that gripped Bowie County and the nation
• - The verdict, the sentence, and what remains for the community of New Boston, Texas