(Texas Scorecard) – A Texas woman convicted of one of the most gruesome murders in recent memory is now appealing her death sentence, arguing that prosecutors improperly introduced humiliating and prejudicial evidence against her during her trial.
Taylor Rene Parker, 32, was sentenced to death in 2022 for the murder of 21‑year‑old Reagan Hancock and Hancock’s unborn daughter, Braxlynn, on October 9, 2020, in New Boston.
Parker’s appeal was heard by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on September 17, 2025, where her attorney, Caitlin Halpern, argued that the State’s evidence was intended to manipulate the jury into trivializing Parker’s life.
The Murder
Parker brutally attacked Hancock inside her home—beating, stabbing, and strangling her before using a scalpel to cut the unborn child from her womb. Hancock’s three-year-old daughter was in the house at the time of the incident.
The two women had first met in 2019, when Parker—who worked as a freelance photographer—took engagement and wedding photos for Hancock and her husband.
For months, Parker had faked her own pregnancy to convince her boyfriend she was expecting and try to keep him from leaving her. After killing Hancock, she fled the scene with the infant in an attempt to pass the child off as her own.
She was later stopped by a state trooper for speeding and erratic driving. The trooper found her covered in dried blood while holding the dead baby with the umbilical cord still attached. She was subsequently transported to a nearby hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma.
Parker claimed she had given birth on the side of the road, but medical staff found no signs of recent childbirth. Under questioning, Parker admitted she had been in a “physical altercation” with Hancock and took the baby from her body. She was immediately arrested for abduction and murder.
Prosecution
Parker was charged with capital murder in connection with the deaths of both Hancock and her baby.
The State secured two indictments—one for “intentionally causing the death of Hancock in the course of kidnapping or attempting to kidnap Braxlynn,” and another for “intentionally causing the death of Braxlynn, an individual under 10 years of age.”
The State only proceeded with the first indictment—believing it offered the clearest path to a capital conviction.
Parker did not dispute the murder charge, but sought to avoid a capital conviction by contesting whether the kidnapping or attempted kidnapping had occurred.
In Texas, a person commits kidnapping when they “intentionally or knowingly [abduct] another person.” This raised debate over the very definition of “personhood.”
According to various Texas statutes, “person” means “an individual or a corporation.” An “individual” is defined as “a human being who has been born and is alive.” A child “has been born and is alive” if “the child had been completely expelled from its mother,” and then “had an independent existence; ‘that is, that the child breathed, and its blood circulated independent of its mother.’”
This forced the State to prove Braxlynn was alive when extracted from Hancock’s body.
Testimony from medical examiners who handled Braxlynn’s autopsy is seemingly contradictory, but the EMT claimed he had resuscitated the baby and gotten a pulse. The State also reasoned that Parker would not have taken the baby with her if she believed Braxlynn were already dead.
The trial court agreed.
Because Parker is the only witness to know for sure whether Braxlynn was alive at the time of extraction, her motives when taking the baby became central to both the trial and appeal.
Appeal
To prove Parker’s motive during her jury trial, the State provided extensive background evidence concerning her weight loss and prior extramarital affairs.
Halpern claimed Parker’s trial was tainted by numerous errors, most notably extraneous evidence admitted in the case. The admission of this evidence was therefore appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals—Texas’ highest criminal court—as “prejudicial.” Oral arguments were heard in September.
Halpern cited the Supreme Court’s January 2025 ruling in the Brenda Andrew case. Andrew’s death sentence was vacated and remanded to a lower court for review, because prosecutors allegedly trivialized her life in the eyes of the jurors by focusing on her sex life and physical appearance.
In the Parker case, Halpern alleged that jurors heard from “witness after witness that Parker had had weight loss surgery and that beforehand she had been very large.” Extensive evidence was presented that Parker “was fat” and that “her stretch marks were gross.”
After the surgery, Parker was reportedly always flirting, showing off her body, and going to work dressed like she was headed to the club. The jury heard about numerous extramarital affairs, including an instance in which her ex-husband caught her having sex in a car with another man.
Halpern claimed that this constitutes inadmissible evidence based on “gender and gender stereotypes” that are “no less insidious than evidence going to race.”
Regarding the Court’s precedent at the punishment phase, Halpern noted that evidence must be relevant either to future dangerousness or to the sufficiency of mitigation.
“Evidence that her boyfriend thought she was overweight and gross and responded to her sexual messages with ‘I’ll pass’ had no relevance to either of those factors,” said Halpern.
State prosecuting attorney Jeff Shell disagreed, arguing, “It is contextual evidence in the sense that it explains why [Parker] decides to begin at a certain weight.”
Shell then stepped back from the podium while patting his stomach and said, “I am fat.” Courtroom laughter ensued as one judge commented, “Join the club.”
The State reasoned that Parker embarked on this weight loss journey as a part of her obsession with impressing her boyfriend—an obsession that eventually led to the murder of Hancock and the kidnapping and death of Braxlynn.
Shell argued that this contextual evidence was used to inform motive rather than character. Judges seemed to agree with his reasoning throughout the hearing.
Judge Lee Finley said the “State’s theory was … this woman did this horrible thing, cutting this child out, because she wanted to keep a man. And likewise, this woman was at one point fat, and then became not fat because she wanted to keep a man. How are those two things not related?”
Death Penalty Case Concerns
Parker’s appeal comes as Texas continues to re‑examine trial practices in other death penalty cases—most recently Robert Roberson, whose execution was scheduled for October 16 but was delayed by the Court of Criminal Appeals over concerns of “junk science” evidence used at the trial.
Roberson was convicted more than 20 years ago of murdering his two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis.
After years of appeals, the Court decided this month to reject nearly all of Roberson’s latest claims but sent one issue back to the trial court in Anderson County for review.
State prosecutors are hoping for a different result from Parker’s appeal—a case that was described as “particularly horrendous” by Judge Scott Walker during oral arguments.
Parker is currently housed at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville—the primary detention facility for female death row inmates in Texas.
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