This photo provided by the Bi-State Detention Center in Texarkana, Texas, shows Taylor Parker. Parker was convicted of capital murder, Monday, Oct. 3, 2022, for killing a pregnant woman to take her unborn baby.
A Texas woman convicted of killing a pregnant woman she knew and kidnapping her unborn daughter, has been sentenced to death.
A Bowie County jury last month found Taylor Rene Parker guilty of capital murder in the fall 2020 slayings of Reagan Michelle Simmons-Hancock, 21, and her baby. Parker was also convicted in the abduction of the baby cut from the victim's womb who later died.
Online court records show jurors delivered the death sentence Wednesday.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, although jurors were tasked with handing down the sentence, with the alternative being life in prison without parole.
Simmons-Hancock's body was found Oct. 9, 2020, at her home in New Boston, about 160 miles northeast of Dallas near the Texas-Oklahoma state line.
According to a probable cause affidavit, that same month, Parker told her boyfriend she was pregnant, held a gender reveal party and said she was going to a hospital in Oklahoma to preregister for labor to be induced.
That same day, police received a 911 call from a woman who reported someone had killed her daughter, the affidavit shows. Responding officers found Simmons-Hancock, who had been 34 weeks pregnant, with a large cut along her abdomen and the baby no longer in her womb.
The affidavit goes on to read, Texas state troopers conducted a traffic stop of a car that day and found Parker holding a baby in her lap and “the umbilical cord was connected to the infant, which appeared to be coming out of the female’s pants, as if she gave birth to the child,” the affidavit continues.
During the hearing, a photo was shown of Hancock’s body at the crime scene, the outlet KSLA reported. Prosecutors said they want to remember her as a mother who died fighting for her baby. Earlier in the trial, Hancock’s fingernails were found in the placenta.
Parker’s attorneys had argued the baby was never alive and moved to dismiss a kidnapping charge, which would have lowered the capital murder charge to murder.
But at trial, several medical professionals testified the infant had a heartbeat when born.
“We are just so thankful justice has been served today, for not only our family, our friends, the prosecution team, our community,” Jessica Brooks, the victim's mother told local news outlet KSLA.
That same day, police received a 911 call from a woman who reported someone had killed her daughter, the affidavit shows. Responding officers found Simmons-Hancock, who had been 34 weeks pregnant, with a large cut along her abdomen and the baby no longer in her womb.
The affidavit goes on to read, Texas state troopers conducted a traffic stop of a car that day and found Parker holding a baby in her lap and “the umbilical cord was connected to the infant, which appeared to be coming out of the female’s pants, as if she gave birth to the child,” the affidavit continues.
During the hearing, a photo was shown of Hancock’s body at the crime scene, the outlet KSLA reported. Prosecutors said they want to remember her as a mother who died fighting for her baby. Earlier in the trial, Hancock’s fingernails were found in the placenta.
Parker’s attorneys had argued the baby was never alive and moved to dismiss a kidnapping charge, which would have lowered the capital murder charge to murder.
But at trial, several medical professionals testified the infant had a heartbeat when born.
“We are just so thankful justice has been served today, for not only our family, our friends, the prosecution team, our community,” Jessica Brooks, the victim's mother told local news outlet KSLA.
[Excerpt Retrieved from an article in The New York Times]
ReplyDeleteExperts 'Deeply Concerned' over the Rise of the Involuntarily Childless Movement
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In 2004, an unnamed Kansas woman drove to Missouri, strangled a pregnant woman with a rope, then cut out her baby with a kitchen knife. She awaits trial.
In 2016, Christine Lyons, an Australian woman who was 'desperate' to have children, faced one charge of murder and one charge of attempted murder of Samantha Kelly.
In 2020, A Bowie County jury found Taylor Rene Parker guilty of capital murder in the slayings of Reagan Michelle Simmons-Hancock and her baby in the same year.
This year, Lucy Letby, a British nurse, is on trial accused of the murder of seven infants. Investigators uncovered a note on Letby's person that read 'I will never marry or have children of my own'.
These women, driven to murder in the pursuit of motherhood, are but a few representatives of an ideology that presents a rising, yet largely ignored, threat to society: involuntarily childlessness. These 'inchils' and their ideology are the subject of an increasing body of research by counter-terrorism experts the world over.
Professor Ephraim Goldberg, head of the psychology department at the University of Tel Aviv and leading expert on inchil ideology, believes that inchil ideology is not a recent phenomenon. 'History, ancient and contemporary, provides many examples of women going mad because they were unable to have the children that they erroneously believed that they were owed by life', said Goldberg. He believes that the key to preventing outbursts of inchil violence is to closely monitor spaces that are populated with inchil-adjacent individuals. '[His research team] have noted patterns of radicalisation that is consistent with that which is seen in other extremist ideologies, including the Free Palestine Movement', said Goldberg.
Investigators from Interpol who are involved the Madeline McCann case have advised not to exclude inchil ideology as a possible motive in the disappearance of the child from a Portuguese holiday resort in 2007.
Bob Rowell, Lead Intelligence Officer from the Bureau of American Research and Reconnaissance on the Extremist Nulliparous, has expressed similar concerns at the increasing levels of violence attributed to the inchil movement. The father of three, who has spent the last five years infiltrating the inchil movement and has written extensively for Vice News, said, 'Infertility communities and their users are characterised by extreme jealousy and a petulant sense of entitlement to that which they believe they have been unjustly denied'. He continued, 'Infertile and involuntarily childless women present a significant risk to pregnant mothers and their children, as well as national security as a whole'.
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