NEW BOSTON, Texas – The courtroom was packed on the first day of the trial in the Taylor Renee Parker fetal abduction case Monday morning, with upwards of 50 spectators at the 202^nd District Court at the Bowie County Courthouse.

Opening statements given by District Attorney Kelley Crisp and the lead defense attorney Jeff Harrelson gave the 12-person jury an idea of what lies ahead in what is expected to be several weeks of testimony.

Judge John Tidwell is presiding over the trial and the jury consists of six women and six men, plus two alternates who were selected from over 500 qualified people.

Taylor Parker is charged with the Oct. 9, 2020 death of Reagan Simmons Hancock. She was beaten, hit in the head with a blunt force object, then a knife was used to remove her unborn baby.

Parker has pleaded not guilty.  

According to the prosecuting attorney, the circumstances of the case revolve around layers of fraudulent activity by Parker, leading up to and including faking a full-term pregnancy.

Crisp stated the motive for the murder and the kidnapping was to keep Parker's boyfriend, Wade Griffin, with whom Parker was obsessed, from leaving the relationship, as it appeared his feelings were not as strong toward her as hers were toward him.

Some of the measures in her façade included purchasing and using a fake belly, fraudulent ultrasounds, having a gender-reveal party and posting her fake pregnancy on social media.

Parker was unable to get pregnant due to a past sterilization procedure and later a hysterectomy.

The medical examiner, stated Crisp, said the victim, Hancock, received over 100 stab and cut wounds and appeared her skull was crushed by a hammer.

After Parker left Hancock face down on the floor of the victim’s Austin Street home in New Boston, Texas, she left Hancock’s three-year-old daughter alone in the house with her dying mother, Crisp said.

The prosecuting attorney went on to say that Parker drove with the baby in her lap who needed medical attention and was pulled over by a state trooper in DeKalb, Texas who sent her and baby via ambulance to a hospital in Idabel, Okla.

Parker had made sure her boyfriend was away in Oklahoma when she committed the murders and kidnapping and told him doctors would induce labor that day in the Idabel hospital, Crisp said.

The prosecution emphasized that this was the first case of this magnitude -- a fetal abduction, double homicide and kidnapping -- ever in Bowie County.

Crisp also stated that Parker was brilliant in all of her schemings and that she was also an incredible and most believable actress.

When it was the defense attorney’s turn, Harrelson focused on the fact that there would no doubt be emotional responses from the jurors from the images and body cam video, but not to let their emotions cloud out reason and rationality in their decision-making.

Harrelson stated it was a complicated case, but the goal of the jury is three-part. First, listen to all the evidence. Secondly, to follow the law the judge instructs of them, and lastly, to be fair.

The defense also said the duty of the jury is not to decide whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of the crime, but of the crime charged.  And that it would find that decision unanimously and proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

For example, guilty of murder, but not guilty of capital murder.

Harrelson said regardless of what the jurors have read or heard before trial should not be considered in their decision because Parker is presumed innocent until the state proves beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant is guilty.

The term ‘to be fair’ is subjective, but there should be no bias or prejudice in that determination, Harrelson said.

Parker faces death or life without parole for killing the mother; a possible punishment of 99 years to life in prison for killing the baby. The kidnapping charge carries a sentence of 2 to 20 years imprisonment.