The Murder of Reagan and Braxlynn Hancock

In October 2020, a quiet East Texas community was shaken by a crime so horrifying it sounded almost unimaginable. Reagan Hancock, a 21-year-old expectant mother just weeks away from giving birth, was found brutally murdered inside her home. What investigators uncovered in the hours that followed revealed a chilling web of deception, obsession, and a carefully constructed lie that had been unraveling for months. At the center of it all was a woman, Taylor Parker, pretending to live a life that didn’t exist, and a plan that would end in tragedy for Reagan and her unborn daughter, Braxlynn.

Viral Smoked Mexican Street Corn Dip: https://www.instagram.com/reels/CrEeNh-JfQX/

Killer ingredient of the week: Whipped Feta Dip: https://www.themediterraneandish.com/creamy-whipped-feta-dip/

For case or recipe submission, email: recipeformurderpod@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey true crime ladies, welcome to Recipe for Murder. Hi, guys, and welcome to Recipe for Murder, where True Crime Meets the Kitchen with me, your host, Laura Michelle. If this is your first time here, welcome and thank you for joining me. If this is your second or third time here, thank you for coming back. I really appreciate it. Um, tonight we're gonna skip the small talk because our case is a lot and we have a lot to cover. So we're gonna go ahead and move straight to the recipe I want to share with you and my killer ingredient. The recipe I want to share with you this week is not actually uh a dinner, but here we are in the summer months or the warmer weather where people have a lot of backyard barbecues and potlucks and a lot of get-togethers. This one is the viral smoked Mexican street corn dip. It is really easy to make and it is a crowd pleaser. I recently made it for my potluck at work, and there were no leftovers. I got tons of compliments. I had several people reaching out for the recipe. I will link the recipe that I followed in the show notes, and I promise you, you will not be disappointed in this dish. It is very, very good. My killer ingredient this week is whipped feta dip. It is delicious. It is so good with so many different things: roasted vegetables, um, fresh vegetables, flatbread, grilled chicken. It goes really well in Mediterranean bowls. I like to add a little scoop when I make a salad. It's really easy. Again, I will link that recipe, and it stays good in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. So now that our foodie news is out of the way, we can move on to the real reason that we are here, this week's case. Imagine being in a relationship and you sense that your partner is about to break up with you. What would you do? Would you try to save the relationship? Would you just accept it as what it is and move on and deal with the heartbreak? Or would you lie? Would you do everything you could to trick this person into staying in a relationship? I hope that's not the case, but that is the case of this story. On the morning of October 9th, 2020, the small town of New Boston, Texas was waking up like any other Friday. People were heading to work, kids were getting ready for school, and inside a quiet home on Austin Drive, 21-year-old Reagan Simmons Hancock was beginning what should have been an ordinary morning. Her husband, Homer, had already left for work around 6:30 a.m. Reagan stayed behind with their three-year-old daughter, Kinley, preparing for the arrival of their second child. She was 34 weeks pregnant and only three weeks away from meeting her baby girl, Braxlin. Friends and family said Reagan was excited. The nursery was ready, and the tiny clothes had already been folded and put away. Their family was growing, and by all accounts, life was moving in a happy direction. But sometime that morning, something changed. A few hours after leaving the home, Homer began receiving text messages from Reagan's phone that immediately felt wrong. One of them just simply said, I love you, which I know sounds like something that you would normally hear from your partner, but he just said that it was really odd just to come like that and just it felt off. And later he would say that they just did not seem like her. Then, around 9 30 that morning, a neighbor messaged him on Facebook saying that the family dog was running around outside, and that was enough to set up alarm bells because Reagan would never leave the dog outside. And also, I believe that it was a puppy, so this is definitely not a dog that needs to be outside. Homer immediately tried calling her, but no answer. Again, nothing. As panic began setting in, he contacted Reagan's mother Jessica, who lived closer to the house, and asked her to stop by and check in on her daughter. At approximately 10:15 a.m., Jessica pulled into the driveway, and instantly she knew something was terribly wrong. There were drops of blood outside the home. Then she saw the handprint, bloody, smeared across the back door. Inside the house, waiting for her, was a scene so horrifying it would shock even seasoned investigators. What happened inside that house would become one of the most horrifying crimes Texas had seen in years. Jessica rushed through the home screaming for her daughter. And there, on the floor, she found Reagan, covered in blood, brutally attacked, and clearly deceased. As she called 911, her voice was in pure panic and she was screaming, Help me, my daughter's been murdered. Meanwhile, in another room of the house, Reagan's three-year-old daughter Kenley was found alive. Fortunately, physically unharmed, but she was bloody, scared, and crying, and horrifically, she more than likely witnessed the attack on her mother. Investigators arriving at the scene immediately realized this was no ordinary homicide. There was blood everywhere, on the walls, the furniture, even the appliances. The home showed signs of a violent struggle, evidence that Reagan fought desperately for her life. And then came the discovery that no one expected. The police learned quickly that Reagan was pregnant and urgently directed paramedics to check on the baby. When they rolled her over, the unimaginable became reality. Reagan's abdomen had been sliced open hip to hip, and her unborn baby was missing. Homer arrived at his house shortly after the police. Upon arrival, he had to forcibly be held back from going inside. I just I cannot imagine what that was like for him. At first, police had no idea who could commit something so brutal. But less than an hour earlier, about 35 miles away from the Oklahoma state line, another bizarre scene has started unfolding. A Texas state trooper, Chad Winnie, had pulled a woman over for driving erratically. The woman inside was in distress with an unresponsive baby on her lap and an umbilical cord protruding from her pants. Later, a placenta would be found in the car. She had blood on her hands, face, legs, and feet. A passerby started to help and noted that there was not much blood on the driver's seat of the car or on the baby, and most of the blood on the woman seemed to be dry. At the time, the trooper had no idea he was standing in the middle of a crime scene connected to a murder investigation that was rapidly unfolding back in New Boston. EMS took both mom and the baby to the McCurtain County Memorial Hospital in Idabell, Oklahoma, despite her multiple requests to be taken to a different hospital in Oklahoma where she claimed her doctor practiced. Now, I mentioned earlier this was about 35 miles away from the crime scene. That's about a 45-minute drive. So this woman had somewhat of a head start, but I'm assuming it's not nearly as much as she had hoped. This woman identified herself as 29-year-old Taylor Parker. Upon arriving at the hospital, almost immediately the medical staff became suspicious. Something was not adding up. Taylor showed no signs of recent childbirth, no active bleeding, and no medical evidence that she had delivered a baby at all. Someone from the hospital called the police to report the chaotic scene unfolding. Police body cam caught the confusion and panic among the staff, which I'm about to play for you.

SPEAKER_06 7:43

Okay, yes. Are you ready? I'm coming.

SPEAKER_07 8:01

You want you can't check the margin of what is A C G okay. Okay. So is it multiple manager or monitor?

unknown 8:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 8:36

Oh, it's uh interesting. So I think it's gonna be that we've had Lamar County called here too.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Lamar County, I talked to Japan, and then Bowie County.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

So when I'm talking they're talking about they've never done this before.

SPEAKER_06 9:02

Why they have the uh she's in there, she refuses to have a vaginal health check to make sure she's not hemorrhaging. They've done an ultrasound and HCG, and it doesn't show that she's been pregnant. They have the placenta. Where she is in the room.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

She is no So yeah, you can hear that they are really concerned. Clearly, she did not just have a baby, but Taylor was claiming this baby was hers. Obviously, they're making sure that she couldn't leave, and you heard the doctor explaining how to determine if she had just delivered a baby, and they're saying nope, she definitely did not. Now, some of these clips are long, but I do feel they're important to the story. The next one is Taylor calling her boyfriend. It's kind of hard to hear, but you can hear her in the background crying while the nurses continue to discuss the situation.

SPEAKER_06 9:59

She's on the phone now with her boyfriend, so I'll try to sidetrack her a little bit. I can say the ER doctor. They took her blood work HCG levels, which is a problem. And they're saying that the placenta, they can just send the placenta off for test and whether it comes back to her or not. Exactly to make sure she's not emerging. She won't let her.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Okay, so Taylor's on the phone crying to Wade, and you hear them talking about the placenta. Remember, the placenta was found in the car, and they did send that off for testing. So with the um the levels and clearly no um signs of giving birth. I mean, if this baby is not hers, they are going to know. So during this, the news was spreading about a murdered pregnant woman whose baby had been cut from her womb, and investigators very quickly began connecting the dots. The cops entered Taylor's room to question her, and she tells them her version of events.

SPEAKER_04 11:15

Hey, my name's Janet Chance. Did you get birth on the side of the road or something? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_05 11:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:26

Where was that here?

SPEAKER_05 11:29

I want to know what was in Deepown.

SPEAKER_04 11:32

Decal down Texas? Yes, sir. Oh, okay. So what happened to school and labor on the side of the road?

SPEAKER_05 11:41

No man. My I first arrived with my we sell uh I'm a hog by facility and we were gonna come through here that I was having contractions and stuff and wasn't feeling good, so I stayed at home and told him we would just meet here after he dropped the hogs at seven. And he got tied up. I mean, he's on his way. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 12:09

Oh, now how did you get here? She got herself?

SPEAKER_05 12:13

No, an April.

SPEAKER_04 12:16

Oh, okay. The nurses said that you weren't let the doctor check you to make sure you weren't hemorrhaging or anything.

SPEAKER_06 12:22

I did an ultrasound. The hemorrhaging is the bleeding. Um, whether you're passing clots or not passing clots, they it's really good to have you checked for that.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Okay, so you hear the cop in this one, he is definitely playing good cop right now, which I really appreciate his approach. He's just letting her talk and and knowing that she's more than likely lying, he is gonna let her dig herself into a hole pretty soon. So you could hear that they really need to do that vaginal check that she has been declining up until this point. The next one I'm gonna play you is the nurse going into a little more detail about why they need to do that vaginal exam.

SPEAKER_06 13:03

I was passing massive clots and they were about to start giving me blood. That's why they're wanting to check to check out, you know, any damage and check to make sure you're not bleeding inside internally. That's why they're wanting to make sure.

SPEAKER_05 13:19

That's okay, that's fine. I didn't know it was a big deal not to want the guy to do that.

SPEAKER_06 13:26

No, I mean, if you don't want to, that's up to you, but that's why they're wanting to check just to make sure. Make sure you're okay. Yeah, I mean, that's a big deal. I mean, you've got blood all over you and all over your fingernails, and I mean that's a that's a pretty intense thing. Yeah. There's something wrong for them bringing me over here. What did you have? Did you have a boy or a girl?

unknown 13:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Taylor now finally agrees to have the vaginal exam, and in the meantime, they are gaining access to her medical records. Here's the doctor after the exam.

SPEAKER_09 14:17

So it surely doesn't look like a baby came out of there. It doesn't? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

I don't know why, but the tone of that doctor really bothered me. It was almost kind of like he was a little not giddy, but kind of maybe thought it was a little bit funny. And there is absolutely nothing funny about this situation. Shortly after the exam, the hospital staff did get access to Taylor's medical records. And this is not funny, but they actually learned that she had a hysterectomy years ago, meaning she does not even have a uterus, and it was absolutely impossible for her to be pregnant. So now the doctor has done the check, confirmed she's not pregnant. They know that she's had a hysterectomy, but yet Taylor is still swearing this baby is hers. But the cop, the nice cop, is getting ready to break the news to her that um Reagan's body has been found.

SPEAKER_04 15:27

And her baby's been removed from her body. And then you show up with a baby, and the information is because you've had it is correct. There's no way you could have been pregnant. Even though you've been telling people for a while you've been pregnant.

SPEAKER_05 15:48

I didn't hear me anybody on the side of the road.

SPEAKER_04 15:52

Well, I'm not saying it did. I'm just saying that there's a there's a woman that had her baby removed from her body. Her body's found on the side of the road. I didn't say you did. I just want to know what happened where this baby came.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

So the cop is now laying it out for her, kind of letting her know that these things are not adding up yet. Taylor still claims to not know who Reagan is and that this baby is hers, and she had the baby on the side of the road. The cop is now done with Taylor's lies, and he's getting ready to let her know that that they have everything they need. They know she's lying.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

I mean, sometimes people have you know they go through depression and uh, you know, some mental issues and things causes things, causes good people to make bad choices.

unknown 16:38

Right?

SPEAKER_04 16:39

And that's kind of where I'm here at today. I knew that document. I already knew, I already know a lot of a lot of things I ask, I already know the answer to before I ask. I tell you, most of the people are gonna say the worst.

unknown 16:55

They're gonna assume you're an evil person, and that you just butchered this lady and left her to right on the side of the road.

SPEAKER_04 17:03

So you're still a baby. I don't think that was the case. I mean, you don't seem like that type of person.

SPEAKER_08 17:09

I didn't kill anybody.

SPEAKER_04 17:11

Where'd this baby come from? We're past all that. We're past that.

SPEAKER_08 17:18

I did not kill anybody. I didn't kill anybody.

SPEAKER_04 17:22

So was she alive and you left?

SPEAKER_08 17:25

I wasn't with any I was with her.

SPEAKER_04 17:28

Right now, the DA down there who I talked to believes that you're a cold-blooded killer and that you plotted for the last eight months to murder this woman and steal her baby.

unknown 17:41

And right now, the evidence is without a shadow of a doubt. But that's what happened. They can prove that you murdered that woman.

SPEAKER_04 17:52

You know, everybody's happy, she's having showers, and somebody comes along and cuts her damn baby out of the gut. That's what we got right now, and that's what you need to understand. That's the point where we're at. We're past all this nonsense about I wasn't there, I didn't kill nobody. We're past all of that. We know it. We know you did it. There's no doubt whatsoever. You didn't want to hurt. Okay. Maybe it's been hurting.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

I had a stroke in 2015.

SPEAKER_04 18:41

What happened when you opened her mouse and what happened with her?

SPEAKER_00 18:45

So now Taylor knows she is busted. She cannot pretend this baby is hers anymore. So of course, she's making up more lies of, oh, I had a stroke in 2015. I don't know whether or not that's true, but considering her past of lying constantly, especially about medical conditions, it would not surprise me if this was also untrue. But I also like that the cop is kind of easing into possibilities of what could have happened. Taylor finally claims that she did go to Reagan's house and they got in a fight and that Reagan hit her head. And this clip is kind of hard to hear with the phone ringing and other background noises, but I'll try to do the best I can to explain it once it's over.

SPEAKER_04 19:34

Did she say something to you?

SPEAKER_05 19:58

We both hit each other.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

She hit her hand on the table.

SPEAKER_04 20:09

Okay. That's okay. So she's still in her house.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

If you couldn't hear that, she was saying that she got to Reagan's house, Reagan called her a liar, they began to fight, and that Reagan fell and hit her head. This next clip is more of Taylor telling her version of the story.

SPEAKER_03 20:35

I think she got me kicked up right there. Okay. I just remember Kitty Carly.

SPEAKER_04 20:43

But she had an ass up. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 20:45

Yeah, but I don't I don't know why she grabbed it. I don't know why I would ever hurt her. Because I've I've never hurt anybody. I don't have a record.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

She hits you with something. She picks up a record and picks up something, hits you with something, and you're not sure what it was. And then there's what? Did you stick her with a knife? Or was it? Okay, so she gets a knife back from you.

SPEAKER_03 21:16

We I we both had it in our hands a few times.

SPEAKER_04 21:19

Oh okay, I'm just trying to wrap my hand.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

She told me that I was gonna rot. And that she'd kill me. If I touched her again.

SPEAKER_04 21:30

And uh she got the knife. Did she follow on the knife? Is that what you believe? Or is that what you know, or or you don't know?

SPEAKER_03 21:37

Yeah, I don't know because I didn't stab her. I didn't stab her. Okay, that's fine.

SPEAKER_04 21:42

So afterwards, did it look like she didn't like the knife?

SPEAKER_03 21:44

She grabs she grabs something and started stacking herself with it. Don't be they wouldn't believe I did it.

SPEAKER_04 21:52

Oh, okay, so she started hitting herself with something.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

So yeah, according to Taylor, they got in a fight. Both of them um had the knife at one Point, but then uh Reagan started stabbing herself and said she was going to frame Taylor. Give me a break. The last clip I'm gonna play for you from the body cam footage is Taylor discussing the delivery.

SPEAKER_04 22:21

So so you take the lady out or something.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

I don't think you are.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Basically, she's claiming that um Reagan stabbed herself and she delivered the baby to save her. That is what I am gathering. And of course, she claims I'm not a bad person. Yes, you are, Taylor. Yes, you are. With the medical examination and her confession, Taylor was placed under arrest at the hospital initially for kidnapping and tampering with evidence. But before we continue, I need to share that tragically, baby Braxlin did not survive her vicious entry into this world. She was only 34 weeks along when she was forcibly removed from her mother's body. She was taken off life support and declared dead at 1.22 p.m. So to understand why this happened, investigators first had to understand Taylor. And according to nearly everyone who knew her, lying was second nature to her. So who is Taylor and what would drive her to commit such a vicious, vicious attack on a pregnant woman? Taylor Parker was born in Texas in 1992, growing up mostly in the Texarkana region. People who knew her from school described her as outgoing, charming, and obsessed with attention. Her early life was marked by instability, such as financial struggles, a difficult home life, and emotional ups and downs. As she grew older, Taylor began telling stories of her life that were not true. She would create versions of herself that suited her audience, such as posing as a professional photographer, a nurse, and at one point a fertility specialist. She also faked medical conditions and had a history of forging documents. Basically, she was a con artist, and I think we all know what a con artist is, but I was curious to know what the actual definition was, so I'm going to share. A con artist, which is short for confidence artist, is a skilled manipulator who defrauds and swindles people out of their money or property. They are also referred to as scammers, grifters, or confidence tricksters. The key characteristics are the first one, gaining trust. As mentioned, the term con is short for confidence. Their first step is usually to earn the victim's trust and lower the defenses. Next is manipulation. They use psychological tactics to exploit human emotions like greed, fear, vulnerability, or desire for easy money. And the last one is deception. They often use elaborate lies, false identities, or fake schemes to make a victim believe something untrue. After a professional evaluation, Taylor was declared a woman capable of extreme deception, manipulation, and violence. She was deemed a pathological liar and also has narcissistic personality traits. Taylor had been married twice, first to Tommy Waycasey and then Hunter Parker. She shared two children with her first husband, Tommy. Their marriage ended in 2017, and Tommy later stated that her lies and manipulation ultimately led to their divorce. Taylor met and married Hunter shortly after her divorce from Tommy, but once again, due to her lies, they separated in 2019. Just a few weeks after her divorce from Hunter, she started dating a man named Wade Griffin. So now we have two failed marriages and a new relationship. Wade and Taylor began dating in the spring of 2019 after meeting at a rodeo. Wade was in his early 20s, either 21 or 22, and Taylor was 28. He worked long hours at a roofing company in Dangerfield, Texas, and did side jobs such as welding, hog trapping, and managing livestock. Their relationship escalated quickly, and Taylor moved into Wade's house within months of meeting. At first, things were normal, and she charmed Wade by cooking his favorite meals and helping around the property, but she quickly fell into her same pattern and the life started with him. She asked Wade to give her an estimate on clearing and fencing some of her family's land located in Texas, and he estimated the job would cost around $50,000. Taylor agreed to the estimate, claiming that she has family money and she put him to work. She told Wade that her family earned money through oil and gas royalties from their land, and her grandmother had set up an account for her to access to pay for the work. And side note, she actually uses this lie of family money as a way to quickly move into Wade's house. She said that her mom had taken a hit out on her life and she needed to stay with him in order to be safe. So, with all this money, Wade hired his friend Juan to help. They bought equipment and got to work. She did pay them one small check and then told them that her mom had found out she was clearing the land and she had shut down the project. She also told them that their equipment had been stolen, and Juan broke down in tears. He desperately needed this job to feed his family. So Wade continued to pay him, with Taylor assuring him that she would get her inheritance soon, which she is saying is six million dollars. I don't think Taylor claimed to be getting an inheritance until this point. I think she's just kind of making up lies as she goes, not really knowing what the next steps would be. She also told Wade that he would receive 800 acres of land if they were to ever get married. He received text messages and emails from her family confirming this. And in case anybody is questioning, yes, this was a lie. And she was sending Wade emails and texts from bogus accounts pretending to be her family. Also, going back to the land that she wanted cleared that Wade was actually working on, it didn't it didn't belong to anyone in Taylor's family. So I can only imagine if the property owner came up and saw what was happening, they would definitely have issues with that. As far as the equipment, it's believed that she sold it and just claimed that it was stolen. The lies continued to grow more elaborate, and Taylor decided to buy land for the two of them, and Wade was absolutely on board. They began looking at land, even contacting a realtor. They found a perfect place at Pecan Point and they made an offer of $3.5 million. The land deal eventually grew to include the adjoining land, which made the purchase price $20 million. Wade saw several emails every day with official-looking letters and documents, and she actually wrote Wade a check, a personal check for $8 million. I can't believe anybody would be dumb enough to actually do that. He tried to deposit the check in his bank, but they told him it was a lot of money for a check, and those amounts were usually transferred by wire. So of course, Taylor assured him she would set up the transfer. Banking on money that would ultimately never come through, Wade bought himself a brand new $29,000 ATV, a new $92,000 heavy-duty truck for himself, and a new Nissan Ultima for his mother. He also bought 20 cows for around $21,000. And all of this was financed with the expectation that when the issues with the banks and wire funds were resolved, they would all be paid off. But I'm also thinking, what bank is funding all of this for a 21-year-old? By early 2020, Wade was now in extreme debt and the weight of the situation was starting to affect him. He was falling into a depression and decided it was time to just cut his losses and end the relationship. But Taylor could tell that Wade was about to break up with her, so in a desperate attempt to keep him, she lied and told him she was pregnant. And this was actually the second time she claimed to be pregnant. In August of 2019, Wade saw baby clothes on the counter and asked Taylor what was going on. She told him that she went to the doctor's office a few days earlier and that she was pregnant. And not just pregnant, she was pregnant with twins. And she made this elaborate story shortly after about, you know, claiming to miss Carrie. So now about six months later, Taylor claimed to be pregnant again. But obviously she wasn't, otherwise, this case will not exist, and I wish it didn't. Once that lie left her lips, it spiraled far beyond what anyone could imagine. Wade believed her. Her family believed her. Taylor was now boxed into a corner of her own making and she knew she had to somehow produce a baby. The lengths she went to to fake her pregnancy are astonishing. She found and shared ultrasound images, likely taken from the internet or from her previous pregnancies. Just kind of put a pen in that for a minute. She made up doctors' appointments, telling friends of complex stories of imaginary OBGYN visits. She used text messages and phone calls to pose as medical personnel, including specialists, to maintain the illusion of a high-risk pregnancy. So she's not just claiming to be pregnant, she's claiming to have a high risk pregnancy. And this is something that I want to talk about. I think the reason she was claiming to be high risk were for two reasons. One, to get extra attention. And then I think in her mind, if she had all this detail of the high risk and learned the terminology, that her lie seemed more believable. So it couldn't just be, oh, I'm pregnant. It has to be, oh, I'm pregnant and I have this condition or whatever. Because the crazier it sounds, the the more believable it might be to the ones that might be questioning her because how could she know so much? I don't know. That's just that it bothers me that she's pretending to be high risk. She even purchased a prosthetic pregnancy stomach and she threw herself a gender reveal party. Are you kidding? Now it's really unclear just how she managed to keep Wade in the dark and how she faked this pregnancy for as long as she did. Wade claimed to 100% believe her. He did not question whether or not she was pregnant. And I just I me having children of my own, I just don't know how he went along with everything. I I think that maybe, maybe like, you know, if they were to have sex, she would say, Oh, don't touch my stomach, or we have to be in certain positions. I just I can't understand how he didn't know, but I'm not judging him because he's a victim in all this too. And also you see that he she keeps lying to him and he's just believing everything she says, getting frustrated, but yes, believing it, and it's crazy. But then you think about um these situations. I don't know if anyone saw the documentary on Netflix, I believe it was called Bad Vegan. And it's basically about this woman who gets in a relationship and her life is totally normal. And then by the end of the relationship, her life is wrecked because what started out as a small lie from her partner, he was able to explain it away. So the next crazy thing that came up, you know, made the last one not seem so crazy, and it just kept kind of snowballing to where once you get to a situation where it is just absolutely insane, it's it's you can look back and just see the progression of it. So I think Wayne, and also he was so young. I called him Wayne, I meant to say Wade. He is so young. It's just still, I have so many questions and not the answers. As her fake due date approached, Taylor began to panic. September 22nd, 2020, which was the fake due date, it came and went without any signs of labor. Taylor lied, not surprisingly, and told Wade and her family and friends that her due date had been pushed back. But suspicion had begun to grow. Wade's mother later stated that she tried to convince him that Taylor was not actually pregnant, but Wade persistently refused to believe that she could fake an entire pregnancy. Taylor, determined to find a baby, was spiraling. And that is when she turned her gaze towards her friend, Reagan. Reagan was very pregnant and Taylor was very desperate for a baby. The two met through Reagan's cousin, who was friends with Taylor. Reagan hired Taylor to photograph engagement pictures, and they remained connected through social media, you know, bumping in each other around town or you know, local events, but they were not close friends. Reagan shared her pregnancy journey on social media like many expecting parents, which led Taylor to Reagan. After this monster turned her focus on Reagan, she made a plan. And what happened next is nothing short of a real life nightmare. Based on digital forensics and GPS information uncovered during the investigation, this is a timeline into the weeks leading up to Reagan's murder. On September 22nd, 2020, once again the same day as her fake due date, she reached out to a hog rancher in Wenwood, Oklahoma to arrange the sale of Wade's hogs for just over $6,000. She gave the name Taylor Griffin, and the rancher was concerned that it might be a scam because the seller, which we know is Taylor, didn't understand anything about licensing or interstate transfer rules, so he ended the conversation. She reached out again on September 27th, claiming it was all legit, but once again he refused. Around this time, Taylor began reaching out to Reagan on Facebook, and they consistently messaged leading up to the murder. On October 5th, four days before the murder, an intentional fire was set at Wade's house where he and Taylor were living, which knocked out the plumbing and the power, thereby inflicting distraction and chaos, buying more time. Taylor was scheduled to be induced on the following day, October 6th, but conveniently a bomb threat was called into the clinic the very same day. Not that this is going to surprise anybody. Detectives have since connected that to Taylor. On the morning of October 8th, the day before the murder, Taylor went to an area close to Reagan's house and sat outside for a while. She purchased a Talkatone app and began testing it by texting herself. And for those out there like me who didn't know, Talkatone is a free app that enables users to make calls and texts under different phone numbers other than their own. She went back later that evening to actually hang out with Reagan. And some sources suggest that she never even went to bed that night. She spent the rest of that night putting her plan into motion. The exact time for this is not known, but sometime after the purchase of her talkatone app, Taylor, pretending to be the farmer, used her app to send messages to Wade stating that the farmer had agreed to buy the hogs for just over $61,000. And Wade, desperate for money, keep in mind he is financially wrecked, he agreed to the quick sale. Wade loaded up the hogs and left their house around 3 45 a.m. to make the long drive. So now we're on the day of the murder, October 9th, 2020. Around 4.28 a.m., Taylor watched YouTube videos on how to deliver cesarean births at 35 weeks. At 6.45 a.m., Taylor stopped at a gas station and she was seen on surveillance purchasing gas. She then exchanged messages with Reagan starting at 7.22 a.m. using the new fake number. So reading between the lines, I'm assuming that all the communication between Reagan and Taylor up until this point was through Facebook. But now the morning of the murder, it's through this through this app. At 7.45 a.m., Wade showed up with a trailer full of hogs at the hog farmer's property in Oklahoma. And this would put Wade several hours from his house, giving Taylor time to act out her plan. At 7 52 a.m., Taylor arrived at Reagan's house. She knocked, and Reagan innocently opened the door to her killer. Once inside, Taylor attacked Reagan with a hammer, crushing her skull. Once Reagan was incapacitated, she used a scalpel to swiftly cut Reagan's stomach, extracting the unborn baby. She was then stabbed over and over and over. And Taylor brought tools with her, such as the scalpel and an umbilical cord clamp. Reagan bled to death on her floor after the vicious attack. Taylor clamped the umbilical cord and fled with the baby. At 9 14 a.m., geolocation tracking showed both Taylor and Reagan's cell phone leave the house, and she drove erratically towards Oklahoma, only to be pulled over at 9 37 a.m. So also I'm not really sure where she was heading, so this is just my opinion. I think the goal was to get as far away from the crime scene as possible. And I'm thinking that she was gonna get somewhere, take care of the baby, and then once that she felt that it was safe, she was either gonna tell Wade that she delivered at the house or had already been released from the hospital. And keep in mind he is very, very young. At 1018 a.m., Jessica, Reagan's mom, made that 911 call and the horrific discovery is made. We talked about the crime scene earlier, so now I want to talk about Reagan's attack, but it is really brutal and might be hard for some people to hear, so either listen with caution or skip forward. Reagan was found lying in a massive pool of blood. She was stabbed and beaten in four or five areas of the house before she eventually died in her own living room. She had five skull fractures, a broken nose, and more than 100 stab wounds. Her throat was slit and there were signs of strangulation. Her hands showed extensive defensive wounds, including bruises, scrapes, stab wounds, and cuts on her fingers and palms. One finger was dislocated and the tip of another was nearly cut off, so she put up a fight. Reagan's abdomen had been cut open, leaving the result of a crude makeshift C-section. Her unborn daughter Braxlin had been forcibly ripped from the wound. Blood spatter patterns and the chaotic trail of violence helped investigators reconstruct the timeline. There were bloody footprints and smears showing Taylor's path from room to room. Later, Reagan's blood would be found on Taylor's clothing, her car seats, and even the crevices of the scalpel she brought with her. And I just want to point out that the timeline between Taylor's arrival and the time she left, which arrived at 7 52, left at 9 14, that's an hour and 22 minutes. That is a long time. And keep in mind her three-year-old daughter was there the whole time and likely saw all of that. After leaving the hospital, Taylor was taken to the Bowie County Jail in Texarkana, Texas, where she was charged with capital murder, capital murder of a child under 10, kidnapping, tampering with a human corpse. Taylor's trial took place in Bowie County with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. The proceedings stopped even seasoned courtroom veterans. The prosecution presented the following key evidence. The first, forensic evidence. The DNA of baby Braxton was confirmed to be Reagan's baby. Most of the DNA samples taken from the crime scene and from Taylor's car came from Reagan and her baby. The scalpel and umbilical cord were found in her possession containing their DNA. They also found a diaper bag with some blood on it, and inside she had packed newborn baby clothes, diapers, and baby blankets. Next, there were the medical evaluations. Upon arriving at the hospital with the baby, Taylor showed no signs of childbirth. Following the birth of her two children with Tommy, Taylor had a tubal ligation in 2014 and then a medically necessary hysterectomy in 2015, meaning it was impossible for her to conceive. The next we have is the search history. Taylor's cell phone searches revealed how to perform a C-section, fake pregnancy belly, how to get away with faking a pregnancy, and stolen baby cases. The next we have witness testimony. Wade testified that she had faked a pregnancy for nearly a year. Also, he had no idea that she was infertile until the trial, meaning that's probably when he realized her first pregnancy claim with twins was a lie, also. Reagan's mom, Jessica, also gave a devastating testimony. Two of Taylor's friends testified that after her second marriage, she desperately wanted to have a daughter, but she told them that she was unable to because she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She allegedly offered each friend $100,000 to act as a surrogate, though neither were interested. And I'm assuming this was after she told Wade she was pregnant. Tommy testified that he tried to warn Wade anonymously by texting him multiple times, stating that Taylor had a hysterectomy and was using sonograms from her older kids to prove her fake pregnancy. Hunter, who married Taylor following her divorce from Tommy, testified that his ex-wife didn't tell him she was infertile until after they were married. And according to Hunter, she claimed to have a variety of medical problems and even allegedly fake seizures in order to keep their relationship together. I mentioned the ultrasound photos earlier. One friend claimed that Taylor had given her ultrasound pictures from years earlier to make a cake for her gender reveal, but she thought it was really strange and declined the request. The defense strategy. Taylor's lawyers attempted to avoid the death penalty, arguing that she suffered from borderline personality disorder, trauma, and delusions. They claimed that she didn't intend to kill Reagan, only take the baby. Taylor told her attorneys that the baby was dead when she delivered it. They tried to get the kidnapping charge dropped by saying, and I quote, you can't kidnap a person who has not been born alive. I understand that defense attorneys are just doing their job and everybody has the right to defense, but I cannot believe that they went there. Medical records show that the baby was still alive when they arrived. At the hospital and died later. So clearly that defense was very weak and it was proven false. The prosecution told the jury, and this is a direct quote. Payne Reagan must have felt when Taylor started cutting her abdomen hip to hip. Indescribable. When Taylor had the baby and Reggae was still alive, that's when Taylor started slashing and cutting. She can't leave her alive. It was no quick death. She just kept cutting her. I guess Reagan would not die fast enough for Taylor to get out of there with her plans. End quote. The verdict. October 3rd, 2022, after deliberating for less than two hours, the jury found Taylor Parker guilty of capital murder and kidnapping. November 9, 2022, she was sentenced to death. Judge John Tidwell made only one public statement after the sentence. He looked at the bailiff and said, take her to death row. That is where she is now. Taylor is currently housed at the Mountain View Unit, a maximum security women's prison in Gatesville, Texas, where she is only one of seven women in Death Row in Texas. That's enough about Taylor. Let's not ever talk about her ever again, and let's talk about Reagan. Before she became the center of a horrifying headline, Reagan Hancock was a mother, a daughter, a wife, and had so much to look forward to. Her life revolved around her family. Friends and Love once described Reagan as warm, loyal, and deeply compassionate. Someone who made people feel instantly comfortable around her. She had a quiet sense of humor, a nurturing personality, and the kind of kindness that stuck with people for a long time. At just 21 years old, Reagan was preparing for one of the happiest chapters of her life. She and her husband were eagerly awaiting the birth of their second baby girl, and family members said she poured her heart into becoming a mother. She talked constantly about the future. She decorated the nursery, she chose the baby names that she imagined the life that she would build with her young family. The people closest to Reagan often spoke about how devoted she was to the people she loved. She stayed close with her family, checked in on friends regularly, and had a gentle, calming presence. After her death, relatives described her as beautiful inside and out, saying her biggest dream was simply to love and care for her children. She was living a normal life filled with hopes and dreams and the kind of future that so many young families picture for themselves. And that normalcy is what makes what happened to her so upsetting. Behind every true crime case is a real person with plans and relationships and people who love them. In the immediate aftermath of this tragedy, the community rallied to support Homer and Kinley through fundraisers and memorials. As of now, there has been no public updates regarding Homer or Kinley likely to protect their healing process, which is 100% understandable. And my heart goes out to him. And that is the tragic story of Reagan and Braxlin Hancock. Wow. I mean, that was just that is such a hard one. And while it is rare, I mean, clearly fetal abduction is a thing. And I feel like we're seeing more and more of that. And no pregnant woman should ever, ever have to worry about her baby being stolen from her, especially in that manner. It is just absolutely horrific. So everybody, especially if you're pregnant, keep your guard up. It is just it's a scary world out there, and people are crazy. Okay, so we are going to try and shake it off just a little bit. We're gonna end with a palate cleanser, which always is a food question or some kind of little fun food fact. The one I have for you today is do any of you out there have a food that you ate as a child and maybe still do, that you didn't know was weird until you were an adult. And maybe you found out because your friend stared at your plate with confusion and maybe a little disgust or curiosity. Mine is mustard grits. Yep, you heard that right. I put yellow mustard on my grits, and I think it's so good. And I didn't realize it was I didn't realize it wasn't a thing until my first real job. The judgment has taught me, and to this day, if grits are on my plate for breakfast, mustard will be added. So, what's yours? I'm curious to know. Um, thanks for hanging with me, guys. If you want to send me a recipe or send me a case, you can reach out on recipe formurderpod at gmail.com, and I will be back next week with a brand new episode. I hope you guys stay safe and hungry for justice.