A Texas woman is facing the death penalty after being found guilty of killing a 21-year-old expectant mother to steal her unborn baby and pass the infant off as her own.

Taylor Rene Parker, 29, was first arrested in Oklahoma for the gruesome murder of Reagan Michelle Simmons-Hancock and her infant daughter in their New Boston home in October 2020. According to prosecutors, Parker—who had been faking her own pregnancy for nearly ten months—bashed Simmons-Hancock’s skull in with a hammer and stabbed her more than 100 times before removing her unborn baby from her womb using a scalpel.

The Texas woman also reportedly carried out these violent acts while the young mom’s three-year-old daughter was at home.

After the attack, Parker took off with the newborn baby in a car but was quickly pulled over by a Texas State Trooper in De Kalb for speeding. At the time, she told the officer that she had just given birth by the side of the road and that the baby was not breathing. Parker and the infant were then rushed by ambulance to McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel—where hospital staff grew suspicious after the 29-year-old refused to be checked out by doctors.

“She didn’t want them to check her,” Special Agent Chad Dansby told People in 2020. “We were told that, so I talked her into letting the doctor check. They called the doctor and he pretty much told us she didn’t have a baby. It was just a matter of getting her to tell us what happened.”

It was later revealed that Parker—who could not conceive after a hysterectomy—had intensively researched how to fake a pregnancy and watched numerous videos on delivering babies prematurely at 35 weeks, the exact number of weeks Simmons-Hancock had been pregnant with her child.

In fact, Parker had disguised herself to look pregnant, faked ultrasounds, posted maternity pictures on social media and even hosted a gender reveal party for her pretend baby in the months leading up to Simmons-Hanock’s murder.

According to prosecutors, Parker crafted the elaborate lie just to keep her boyfriend around and told him that she was due to give birth on the day of the murder. Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp explained to jurors that Parker is “an actress of the highest order” whose scheme even involved a bomb threat to a hospital, in turn, delaying her scheduled induction.

“Parker didn’t want anymore children,” Crisp told the jury. “She killed Reagan and ripped her baby out to keep her boyfriend.” What’s more is that, after the killing, Crisp stated Parker had stuffed Simmons-Hancock’s placenta down her pants to make it look like she had actually given birth on the side of the road.

“In the past two weeks, the evidence has never been more clear,” Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards further told the jury, as reported by the New York Post. “She’s a liar, a manipulator, and now she’s gonna be held accountable for it.” In her closing statement, Richards also reminded jurors that the young mom was struck in the head at least five times, with such force that the blows compressed her skull into her brain.

“The pain Reagan must have felt when Taylor started cutting her abdomen, hip to hip… indescribable,” Richards said. “When Taylor had the baby and Reagan was still alive, that’s when Taylor started slashing and cutting. She can’t leave her alive. It was no quick death. She just kept cutting her. I guess Reagan would not die fast enough for Taylor to get out of there and get on with her plans.”

Although the baby died at the hospital, Parker’s attorneys argued that she was never alive and moved to dismiss the kidnapping charge, which would have lowered the capital murder charge the 29-year-old stands convicted of. “That’s why in opening statements we spent so much time on definitions. You can’t kidnap a person who has not been born alive,” attorney Jeff Harrelson said in his final argument.

However, several medical professionals have testified that the baby had a heartbeat when she was born. “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 is that Parker said it wasn’t,” Crisp stated.

Parker’s sentencing trial is scheduled to begin on 12 October 2022. And while prosecutors seek death penalty in the case, jurors may opt for her life imprisonment without parole.

In a case of fortune prediction gone terribly wrong, Capital City Police Peshawar, Pakistan, are currently searching for a proclaimed healer who is accused of convincing a pregnant woman to hammer a two-inch nail into her head. Per local news reports, the unnamed Pakistani woman embedded the nail into her skull after the healer told her that doing so would result in her having a son. Yikes.

The spine-chilling story goes something like this: a woman showed up at a local hospital in Pakistan with a two-inch nail (five centimetres) implanted deep into her skull. According to local outlet Dawn, she had three daughters and was desperately hoping for her current pregnancy to give her a son as she was afraid her husband would leave if she had another girl. Approaching an unlicensed religious healer, she was advised by him to hammer in a nail into her skull  in order for her to guarantee she’d be giving birth to a son.

The extreme lengths the woman went to in order to pursue having a male child become more understandable considering the preference of male children in Asia. Several populations use common practises such as dowries and many value the notion of male heirs continuing on the family legacy.

Hospital staff who attended to the woman at the Lady Reading Hospital told Dawn, “She is three months pregnant, and because of her husband’s fear, she went to the faith healer.” The healer in question allegedly gave the woman ‘taweez’ (an amulet for good luck in common South Asia), as well as “things to recite, and the nail.” “The victim then returned home and hammered the nail in her head,” the hospital staff member continued. The woman had initially told them that she hammered it in herself, however she later revealed that the healer she went to had carried out the act.

According to the local publication, family members of the woman heard her screaming in pain and made attempts to remove the nail but were unsuccessful. She also tried to take the nail out herself with pliers. Her family eventually took her to hospital to be treated.

Haider Suleman Khan, the resident neurosurgeon at Lady Reading, also spoke to Dawn and shared that “doctors successfully removed the nail in an operation” after the woman arrived at the hospital. “She said that a woman in her locality did the same and gave birth to a boy even though the ultrasound had shown her unborn child to be a girl,” Khan continued.

An X-ray of the victim’s skull showed that the nail had pierced the top of her forehead but missed her brain miraculously. Khan stated that a hammer or another heavy object must’ve been used to knock it in, according to The Telegraph. He also shared with AFP that the woman was “fully conscious” during the procedure but was in immense pain.”

Now Pakistani police are on the lookout for the charlatan doc. While investigations are ongoing as of now, they are looking for the healer to bring him in for questioning. Covering the story, the BBC noted that the healer’s name still remains unknown and the woman left the hospital soon after the nail was removed without talking to law enforcement.

سوشل میڈیا پر خاتون کی تصویر وائرل

سی سی پی او عباس احسن کےنوٹس پر ایس پی سٹی کافوری اقدام،متاثرہ خاتون کا ہسپتال انٹری ڈیٹا کی پوچھ گچھ کے لئے لیڈی ریڈنگ ہسپتال پہنچ گئے،ہسپتال انتظامیہ سے ملاقات کی

کمپیوٹر انٹری سمیت سی سی ٹی وی فوٹیج سے بھی متاثرہ خاتون کی شناخت کا عمل جاری pic.twitter.com/B1uHMRS9Cx

— Capital City Police Peshawar (@PeshawarCCPO) February 8, 2022

Insider reported that police are also inspecting CCTV footage in order to ascertain the woman’s identity.

Special team has been made to bring to justice the fake Pir who played with the life of an innocent woman & put a nail in her head, with a false promise of a male child.

The team will also investigate why incident was not reported to police by the treating doctor.

— Abbas Ahsan (@AbbasAhsan) February 8, 2022

In a tweet posted on Tuesday 8 February, Peshawar police chief Abbas Ahsan claimed that a special task force had been formed to investigate the incident. “The team will also investigate why the incident was not reported to police by the treating doctor,” Ahsan wrote.

The Los Angeles Times also investigated the situation and found that ‘pirs’ (faith healers) are fairly common in Pakistan while police crackdowns on them are rare. However, the usual advice of offering an assortment of herbs to try, advising people to pray for their ailments and money troubles is a far cry from telling someone to hammer a nail into their head.

Among several other translated tweets posted by Capital City Police Peshawar, an update posted today, Thursday 10 February, stated, “The woman’s mental balance does not seem to be right. She is undergoing a medical examination. The woman’s husband has also been included in the investigation.”