Texas woman sentenced to death for stabbing friend 100 times and tearing baby from womb with scalpel
A Texas woman who killed her friend and ripped her baby out of the womb has been sentenced to death.
A Bowie County jury handed down a death penalty for Taylor Rene Parker, 29, after two hours of deliberations on Wednesday, CNN reported. In early October, the same jury found Parker guilty of murder and capital murder in the death of Reagan Simmons-Hancock, 21, and the theft and death of her unborn baby on 9 October 2020.
Parker, who had been faking a pregnancy out of fear that her boyfriend would leave her, stabbed Simmons-Hancock more than 100 before removing her baby from the womb with a scalpel. She was later caught during a traffic stop after leaving the crime scene in New Boston and told police she gave birth by the side of the road.
The baby girl was taken to a hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma, where she died.
Parker’s attorneys had hoped to persuade the jury to spare Parker’s life and let her serve life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, arguing that she is mentally ill.
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Parker is among six women on death row in the state, where the last execution of a female took place in 1998. In the Lone Star State, death row inmates wait an average of 16 years from the time of sentencing until they’re executed, NPR reports.
Parker will be taken to the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas.
Simmons-Hancock’s mother, Jessica Brooks, spoke before the sentencing and called Parker an “evil piece of flesh demon,” the Texarkana Gazette reported.
“[My daughter] was one of the very few people on this Earth who cared about you. Now, who cares about you?” Ms Brooks said during her victim impact statement. “My baby was alive still fighting for her babies when you tore her open and ripped her baby from her stomach.”
During the trial, prosecutor Kelley Crisp said Simmons-Hancock was about seven-and-a-half months pregnant.
“If [Parker] is capable of that level of violence, she is a future danger. She needs to be on death row. She slashed [ Simmons-Hancock ]hundreds of times. She beat her with a hammer,” Ms Crisp said. “You are going to say she’s not violent? She ripped her uterus out by the back.”
Investigators testified on the day of the killing that she had watched numerous videos on delivering and caring for babies, including one on the physical exam of an infant delivered at 35 weeks.
Parker had lied to her partner and others that she was pregnant and even hosted a gender reveal party. She was unable to conceive after having a hysterectomy, according to the Daily Beast.
Defence attorney Jeff Harrelson argued that Parker was mentally ill. During the three-week trial, Mr Harrelson also argued that the kidnapping charge should be dismissed, because the baby had “not been born alive.”
The move would have reduced Parker’s capital murder charge to murder, but prosecutors mentioned that medical experts had confirmed that the unborn girl had a heartbeat.
“We have methodically laid out what she [Parker] did, why she did it, all the moving parts, and all the collateral damage. The best evidence the state of Texas has that baby was born alive,” Ms Crisp said.
