Why Taylor Parker will be denied Death Row meal following horrific murder

Taylor Parker, the subject of Netflix’s latest jaw-dropping true crime documentary, is set to be denied her final meal on Death Row years after she killed a pregnant woman and attempted to take her unborn child.

The 33-year-old, whose horrific crime has been reconstructed in the new streaming show, Maternal Instinct, is currently housed at the Patrick L. O’Daniel prison, situated four miles north of Gatesville on FM 215 in Coryell County, Texas.

She was placed within the facility after being convicted of murdering mother-to-be Reagan Simmons-Hancock and cutting her ‘more than 100 times’ to take her 36-week-old baby, Braxlynn Sage Hancock, from her womb in 2020.

Maternal Instinct retells how Parker misled her loved ones, including then-boyfriend Wade Griffin, for months into believing that she was pregnant with her third child.

(Netflix)

The woman met Simmons-Hancock, 21, whilst moonlighting as a wedding photographer. After murdering her at her house, the woman fled with the child, who died upon arrival to hospital.

Parker was arrested in Oklahoma, and on 3 October 2022, she was found guilty of murder, capital murder, and kidnapping by the jury after about an hour of deliberation.

More than a month later, she was sentenced to death by the trial court upon the jury's unanimous recommendation for capital punishment.

Often, inmates who are sentenced to Death Row are afforded a final meal before the death penalty is enacted.

Taylor Parker will not be afforded the privallege of a Death Row meal request (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)

Former Death Row server Demetrius Terrence Frazier, who was killed with nitrogen gas, ordered Taco Bell and Mountain Dew; Mikal Mahdi, executed by a firing squad, chose ribeye steak cooked medium, mushroom risotto, broccoli and collard greens, and serial killer Aileen Wuornos was given a cup of coffee.

However, Parker, one of the six woman on Death Row in Texas, is set to be denied the traditional last meal.

This is because former inmate Lawrence Russell Brewer, a white supremacist, ruined the privilege.

The criminal, jailed in the late 1990s along with three other men for the murder of James Byrd Jr., asked officials for a huge feast before he was executed.

Chicken steaks, a cheese omelette with ground beef, jalapenos and bell peppers, and fried okra with ketchup were on the menu in addition to three fajitas, a tiple-meat bacon cheeseburger, and half loaf of white bread’.

He also requested: a pizza, a pint of Blue Bell ice cream, one pound of barbecue, three root beers, and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts

Despite his extravagant request, Brewer didn’t eat anything - he claimed he wasn’t hungry.

The banquet that Lawrence Russell Brewer ordered caused lawmakers to reverse the Death Row meal option (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)

After he was executed via lethal injection in September 2011, then-Texas senator John Whitmire declared nobody on Death Row would be afforded a special meal.

In a letter to Brad Livingston, the executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Whitmire said it was ‘extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege’ of picking their last meal.

Livingston soon agreed with the senator's concerns and said: "Effective immediately, no such accommodations will be made. They will receive the same meal served to other offenders on the unit.”

It’s not known when Parker will be executed. However, when she is, she will not be able to pick what she eats.

Maternal Instinct is now streaming on Netflix.