In a new Netflix true-crime documentary now streaming, director Jessica Dimmock revisits the Taylor Parker case that led to Reagan Simmons-Hancock’s death and Parker’s sentencing to death row—while focusing on the people left behind and what the film says the
When the Netflix documentary “Maternal Instinct” opens. the viewer is dropped into a question: something is happening. but the crime isn’t yet clear. Director Jessica Dimmock says she shaped that start around an emotional truth—because in the case of Taylor Parker. “something very off” was visible long before anyone could connect the dots.
The case that the film documents began making headlines in October 2020. In East Texas. Parker killed Reagan Simmons-Hancock at her home. then cut the expecting mother’s unborn child from her womb. Before the murder. Parker—unable to bear children after a hysterectomy—had staged her own pregnancy for months. including using a fake belly that fooled her then-boyfriend. Wade Griffin. Parker planned to pass Simmons-Hancock’s daughter off as her own, but the baby also did not survive.
After the case went to trial, Parker was sentenced to death row.
Now. “Maternal Instinct. ” streaming on Netflix. follows the chain of events leading up to that killing—but Dimmock says the documentary is also built around the people who sensed something was wrong and the family members who now live with the consequences. The film includes interviews with Simmons-Hancock’s grieving family, who continue to grapple with a tragedy that cannot be undone.
What Dimmock wanted to center, she explained, was not just what happened, but what the people closest to the damage felt at the time and how that damage has reshaped their lives.
“What I really wanted to do was include the perspectives of the people that it affected the most,” she said in an interview. “How did Wade feel about it at the time? How does he feel about it now, looking back? How is Reagan’s family altered forever?”
She also pushed back on the idea that a documentary has to mirror every fact in a straightforward list. “In making films. sometimes when there’s a fact that’s going to go in [to the project] or stay out. I often say. ‘That’s what Wikipedia is for. ‘” Dimmock said. adding that the point isn’t always to include all details. but to capture “the feelings that go along with them.”.
Parker, 33, is now behind bars and awaiting an execution date in Gatesville’s Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit, about 42 miles west of Waco. Dimmock said she did not feel a need to reach out to the person at the center of the crime.
“To me, so much of the film is hearing Taylor’s perspective because we see what she’s doing in some ways. We have her [internet] searches,” she said. “I didn’t feel that for this film, from this vantage point and including these characters, that I wanted to necessarily put them in the same bucket.”
In the film’s early minutes, body-worn camera footage helps set the tone. Dimmock said she chose that approach because it matches what unfolded emotionally during the crime: uncertainty, then the gradual realization that something was seriously wrong.
“I really feel like it’s emotionally accurate with how the crime happened. You know something very off is happening with Taylor. but you do not know what she’s going to do. ” she said. “I felt like it’s important to preserve that … The thing that you know is that her ability to have a baby in her lap is not adding up; what she does to get there is the more unexpected part of the story.”.
Interviews in the documentary place that unease in human terms. Dimmock said she was honored and grateful that Wade Griffin—Taylor Parker’s former partner—agreed to talk about what he went through.
“It was really hard to bring him through that. The memories are muddled. There are things he doesn’t totally remember. There is trauma there, for sure,” Dimmock said.
The documentary’s structure, she said, depends on how Griffin’s account is complemented by the account of his mother, Connie Griffin. Dimmock said Griffin’s mother provides details that Griffin himself struggled to articulate.
“He would talk about, ‘Well, she moved in.’ But the mother would say, ‘She moved in really fast, and something felt weird.’ That one-two of it all really helped our ability to tell this story so much,” she said.
The documentary also turns to the family of Reagan Simmons-Hancock. Dimmock said Reagan’s mother, Jessica Brookes, recounts going to her daughter’s home after the murder on Oct. 9, 2020, and describing the sight she encountered.
“They are such an exceptional family. They are so strong. They are coming from the right place,” Dimmock said. “They only do this to remember Reagan, to talk about Reagan, to explain who she was, how much they loved her, and how they will never be the same.”
Dimmock described Brookes’ insistence on the limits of empathy that tries to “imagine” suffering.
“She is strong beyond words, and they have an incredibly supportive network between them,” Dimmock said. “But it is so clear that this is the most devastating thing that anyone can imagine. I was talking to her the other day. and she was like. ‘You know. whenever someone says. ‘I can’t imagine. ‘ she’s like. ‘Don’t. Don’t even try to imagine. I don’t want anyone to even try to imagine. I don’t wish even thinking about it on anyone.’”.
In the documentary, Dimmock says she wants viewers to take away more than horror. She describes “Maternal Instinct” as a film about instinct and the consequences of ignoring it.
“There’s a few things,” she said. “One, this is a film about your gut. This is not to blame any of the people who participate. I think that they would agree with the statement that your intuition is trying to tell you something, and you can be manipulated into not listening to it.”
She also points toward the legal and medical systems that, in her framing, failed Reagan’s family. Dimmock said she wants audiences to understand that medical practitioners who were aware of Parker’s hysterectomy “can’t break laws because those laws are there for a reason. ” but that they nonetheless “knew something was off” and “could not say anything.”.
“They could not warn more specifically,” she said.
For Dimmock, the documentary’s emotional core is the life that was taken. She described Simmons-Hancock as young, beautiful, and a loving mother, framing her as someone “completely ripped from the Earth, like she was struck by a bolt of lightning.”
“It’s unfathomable that someone could have done that to her,” Dimmock said. “And I hope that she is remembered for not just this crime, but for being an amazing wife, sister, daughter and mother.”
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Maternal Instinct Netflix true crime Jessica Dimmock Taylor Parker Reagan Simmons-Hancock Wade Griffin Connie Griffin Jessica Brookes Patrick L. O'Daniel Unit death row East Texas murder