The Fake Pregnancy That Led to Murder: Taylor Parker's Deadly Deception

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You know that feeling when you realize someone's been lying to you?

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Now, take that lie and stretch it out 10 months.

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Fake ultra sounds, a gender reveal party, a baby shower.

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And imagine what happens when that person decides the only way to keep the lie going

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is to take someone else's baby.

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Literally.

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This is the story of Taylor Parker, and it's one of the most calculated, disturbing crimes I've ever covered.

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[Music]

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October 9, 2020, a state trooper in Texas pulls a car over for erratic driving.

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The woman behind the wheel is covered in blood.

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She's got a newborn baby with her.

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Ambilical cord still attached.

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She tells the trooper she just gave birth on the side of the road.

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None of that is true.

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The baby isn't hers, and the woman whose body that came from is lying dead in her home.

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Beaton and slashed over a hundred times.

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The dead woman's three year old daughter is somewhere in that house as well.

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Thankfully, still alive.

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This is the Taylor Parker case.

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This was a performance that had been running for 10 months.

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When the curtain came down, it came down in the most brutal way possible.

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Taylor Parker was 29 years old.

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She had a boyfriend.

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She wanted to keep that boyfriend.

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Somewhere along the way, she decided that the only way to make that happen was to convince him

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that she was pregnant with his child.

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So she started the show.

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We're talking about a full production here.

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She gained weight.

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She wore a fake belly she ordered from a website called fakebaby.com,

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which is surprisingly a real thing.

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She posted pregnancy photos on social media.

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She threw a gender reveal party.

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People showed up with gifts.

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They ate cake.

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They celebrated a baby that did not exist.

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Parker had been researching this intensively.

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How to make it look real.

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What a pregnant belly looks like at certain stages.

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How to fake ultrasound images.

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She studied it like it was a college course.

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Then comes October 9th.

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The day everything had to become real.

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You can't fake a pregnancy for months,

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but eventually people are going to be like,

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"Hey, let me see that baby."

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Reagan Simmons Hancock was 21 years old.

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She was 35 weeks pregnant.

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Here's the connection that makes this whole thing even more twisted.

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She knew Taylor Parker.

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They were friends.

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Well, sort of friends.

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Parker had been Reagan's wedding photographer.

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She'd been at one of the most important days of Reagan's life.

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Camera in hand.

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Smiling.

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Taking pictures.

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That relationship gave Parker something crucial.

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Access.

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Trust.

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Reagan had no reason to be afraid

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when Parker showed up at her house that morning.

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The medical examiner would later testify about what happened next.

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Reagan was beaten in the head multiple times

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with what investigators believe was a hammer.

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The blows fractured her skull in five different places.

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She was stabbed and slashed over 100 times.

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Then Parker cut Reagan's baby from her body.

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Reagan's three-year-old daughter was in the home as well.

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She was unharmed.

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Parker took the baby, got in the car, and drove.

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A state trooper spotted her near DeCab, Texas.

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She was speeding and driving erratically.

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When he pulled her over, she had a newborn infant in her lap,

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trying to perform CPR.

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And the umbilical cord appeared to be coming from her pants.

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The baby, a little girl named Braxel and Sage Hancock,

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was rushed to McCurden Memorial Hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma.

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She did not survive.

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Here's where the legal side of this gets really interesting.

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Was that baby alive when Parker cut it from Reagan's body?

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That question, that specific medical and legal determination

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would decide whether Taylor Parker would be charged with capital murder or just murder.

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The difference between those two charges is life in prison versus death row.

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Parker's defense team went hard on this point.

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They argued the baby was never born alive.

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Their exact words were, "You can't kidnap a person who has not been born alive."

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If they could get the kidnapping charge dismissed, the capital murder charge would fall apart.

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Prosecution brought in medical experts.

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Multiple doctors testified that when that baby was removed from Reagan's body, she had a heartbeat.

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That heartbeat, that tiny flutter of life, made this capital murder.

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That's what put the death penalty on the table.

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Here's arguably the most disturbing piece of evidence in the entire case.

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Investigators looked at Parker's search history.

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Her browser history would she'd been watching online.

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On the morning of October 9, just hours before she went to Reagan's house,

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Parker watched a video.

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A medical video about how to perform a physical exam on a premature infant delivered at 35 weeks.

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Let's sit with that for a second.

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She was researching how to make sure the baby looked legitimate.

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She was planning ahead for the moment when someone might ask questions.

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This was clinical. This was methodical.

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Her search history tells the whole story.

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An early October eight days before the murder, Parker looked up teen pregnancy support groups in Texarkana

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and actually went to one of those meetings.

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Investigators believed she was trying to get close to other pregnant women, possibly even posing as a midwife.

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She searched for information on how to do a C-section,

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how to deliver and inspect a placenta,

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how to get an out-of-hospital birth certificate.

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Two days before the murder, she searched Reagan's address and the location of Reagan's OB-GYN office.

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The jury heard all of this.

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They heard about the fake pregnancy.

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They heard about the research.

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They heard the medical testimony about the heartbeat.

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They heard Reagan's mother Jessica Brooks give a victim impact statement.

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She looked at Parker and said, "My baby was alive.

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Still fighting for her babies when you tore her open and ripped her baby from her stomach."

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It took the jury just over an hour to send its Taylor Parker to death.

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There's one more twist that tells you everything you need to know about who Taylor Parker really is.

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After she was convicted, while she was sitting in the Bowie County jail, she didn't stop.

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She fabricated two confession letters.

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She was trying to frame another inmate for Reagan's murder.

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Even after being found guilty, even facing execution,

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she was still running cons, still manipulating.

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The judge, John Tittwell, said five words when the sinencing was done.

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Take her to death row.

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Reagan's mother called Parker an evil piece of flesh demon.

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So let's talk about what this crime actually is.

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Fetal abduction is incredibly rare.

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We're talking about maybe 36 cases worldwide as of 2022.

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The last statistic I can find on this.

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The first one in the US was in 1974.

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There's a pattern to these crimes.

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The perpetrator is almost always a woman.

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She's usually older than her victim.

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The motivation is almost always the same thing.

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She's fake to pregnancy to keep a romantic partner and she's running out of time.

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The lie is about to collapse.

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So she finds someone who's actually pregnant, someone she can access,

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someone who trusts her, and she takes what she needs to keep the lie going.

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Experts who study this type of crime describe the perpetrators as extreme con artists.

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They're not psychotic.

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They know exactly what they're doing.

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They're driven by narcissism and grandiose delusions.

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They create an alternate reality and then do whatever it takes to maintain it,

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even if that means murder.

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Social media has made this type of crime easier in some ways.

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It's easier to track potential victims.

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It's easier to find out exactly how far along someone is in their pregnancy.

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It's easier to build that trust relationship online before moving it into the real world.

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Taylor Parker used that pre-existing connection with Reagan.

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The wedding photography, the social relationship,

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that gave her the proximity she needed.

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Reagan had no reason to suspect that her photographer friend was planning something like this.

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The defense tried to argue that Parker's friends and family should have done something,

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that they saw the wheels coming off with a fake pregnancy and they should have intervened.

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They tried to shift some of the blame on to the people around Parker for not confronting her.

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That's not how this works.

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Parker is the one who built this elaborate lie.

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She's the one who maintained it for 10 months.

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She's the one who did the research.

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The one who made the decision that Reagan Simmons' hand-cocks life was worth less than the preservation of her fake reality.

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That's on her, completely and entirely on her.

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I think what makes this case so disturbing is the length of the deception, the performance of it all.

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Parker threw a gender-revealed party.

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She invited people. She accepted their congratulations. She posted photos online.

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She lived this alternate reality she'd created.

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And she expected everyone else to live in it too.

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When reality finally caught up, when the performance couldn't continue, she didn't confess.

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She didn't come clean. She decided to double down in the most violent way possible.

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Reagan was 21 years old. She had a three-year-old daughter.

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She was excited about her new baby.

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She trusted someone she thought was a friend and that trust cost her everything.

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Taylor Parker is on death row in Texas right now.

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The legal appeals will probably go on for years.

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That's just how these cases work. The jury's message was clear.

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What she did was calculated. It was cruel and it deserved the ultimate punishment.

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I think about all the people who attended that gender-revealed party, who brought gifts, who believed in Parker's pregnancy.

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I think about Reagan's husband coming home.

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I think about that three-year-old girl who was in the house and what kind of therapy and support she's going to need for the rest of her life.

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Taylor Parker could have stopped at any point. She could have admitted the lie dealt with the embarrassment, face the consequences.

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Instead, she researched how to cut a baby from someone's body and then she did it.

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That's the Taylor Parker case, a ten-month lie that ended in murder, a fake pregnancy that required a real baby,

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and a death-roced sentence that Reagan's family probably doesn't feel like is enough justice for what was taken from them.

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Thanks for listening to "10 Minute Murder," binge-able true crime stories.

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I'm Joe, I'm the host, and I've got a couple of emails to get to.

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First one, subject, not a question, just to thank you.

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Joe, I walk every night after dinner and your show makes the walk feel quicker.

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Helps me unwind, helps me not think about work.

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Wanted you to know you're doing good stuff over there. Hector and Pueblo, Colorado.

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Hector seriously appreciate the email. It's always nice to get kind words.

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And Pueblo, Colorado, I've been there one time. Absolutely gorgeous.

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It looks like a postcard there, and I'm low-key jealous.

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Alright, next email. Subject, all you can die for buffet.

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Hi, Joe. It's Mike again from Canada. The guy who makes sure to like every single episode, even if it doesn't count.

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I've got a different kind of question for you this time.

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I'm putting you on the other side for a change.

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I know you don't believe in the death penalty, but let's just say, strictly as a dark humor hypothetical,

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you are the murderer, and you have to choose your own capital punishment method.

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From the classic menu, lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber hanging, firing squad, beheading, stoning, nitrogen hypoxia.

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So, which one are you picking? It's like the all you can die for buffet.

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Mike, again, I appreciate you liking every episode. That makes my day.

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And thanks for the email. Man, how would I want to die if I were a murderer on death row?

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I feel like most of those are painful. If I'm a murderer, I probably deserve that pain.

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But as a person, I don't want that pain.

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I think maybe lethal injection, that would almost feel like I'm about to go under a medical procedure that I just don't wake up from.

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So definitely that one. Some of these others, like firing squad and beheading, I can barely...

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Like if I'm being given myself a finger stick blood sugar test, I'm not diabetic by the way, but I've done the finger stick thing.

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It runs in my family, so I check myself every so often.

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I could just barely click the little button that shoots the needle into the tip of my finger to get a drop blood.

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Because the anticipation of it just drives me crazy. So firing squad and beheading, I wouldn't be able to be still.

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You know, I do realize that I just connected capital punishment to checking your blood sugar.

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It's not the same, but still kind of torture, I think.

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Hey, if you're new listener to the podcast, welcome in, prop your feet up somewhere comfortable, and binge the five or six hundred back episodes you can binge away on.

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If you're an OG listener, I love you, keep sharing this podcast with your friends and your family.

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You can go to 10minuteMurder.com to learn all about the podcast. Sign up for the newsletter, read the Murder Blog, all kinds of other things.

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And that's going to do it. That's your episode for today. Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder.

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See you next time.