The Case Files: Taylor Parker (part 2)
A fairytale of doom loomed over Wade Griffin, but Taylor Parker kept him enraptured until the bitter and bloody end
A fairytale of doom loomed over Wade Griffin, but Taylor Parker kept him enraptured until the bitter and bloody end
When an alluring blond woman promised Wade Griffin a tantalizing world of money, acres of land, and starting a family, the hues of red on his rose-colored glasses through which he saw Taylor Rene Parker made the startling red flags simply look like ripples of fabric blending into the scenery around him.
Yet to everyone around him, the jarring shades of crimson trying to warn him couldn’t be more apparent.
Wade, a broad, red-haired, 27-year-old blue collar guy who worked as a roofing supervisor, met Taylor Parker at a rodeo in 2019, mere weeks after her divorce from her second husband. He was a bachelor who did side jobs such as welding, hog trapping, and managing livestock. Taylor, now much skinnier than she used to be, who would months later pose in a white dress displaying her “baby bump” beneath a pink floral kimono with shoulder-length, wavy blond hair, must have seemed like a dream come true.
How was Wade to know that a woman so beautiful could be so destructive?
It didn’t take long for Taylor to reel him in. They had dinners together and met each other’s families. Connie Griffin, Wade’s mother, testified during the trial about her first impression of Taylor.
“She just kind of drew you in,” Connie said, describing Taylor as personable. Taylor brought a casserole over to her house on the day they met because she knew Connie worked long hours and also took care of her own elderly parents. Connie watched the family become fond of Taylor, and believed the young woman was someone who Wade could enjoy being with.
Taylor instantly took on the role of doting girlfriend. Wade would how, early on in the relationship, he’d text Taylor with dinner ideas and she’d have it ready for him when he got home from work. She helped take care of the livestock, dealt with finances, and managed the house. Wade settled into the relationship with ease, without a second thought to the woman who was taking care of him so diligently.
“She was cooking. She was a good cook, pretty much the best I ever had. So I was excited,” Wade said.
Taylor also quickly let on that her family had money — and lots of it, despite the fact Taylor herself only worked two part-time office jobs; one at a staffing agency and the other, disturbingly enough, at an OBGYN clinic. Wade explained that he didn’t ask too many questions about his new girlfriend’s finances, as he felt it was none of his business.
Taylor asked Wade to do an estimation to clear and fence a family property in Bryans Mill, Texas, as she was the only one taking care of the place. She said she would use family money she had access to. Her grandmother created an account to put proceeds from the family’s oil and gas royalties into, so that the property could be cleaned up. She fabricated emails and texts to convince Wade that she had both the money and equipment to make the job happen.
“It had grown up and had bushes and saplings on it. She was pretty much wanting me to get it back the way it used to be,” Wade explained, adding that it would have been a $50,000 job. This didn’t seem to faze Taylor.
“I didn’t have no clue. I mean, I believed every word she said,” he added.
Taylor even asked if Wade could hire his friend Juan to help complete the work. But she only gave Juan his first pay check before informing Wade that her mother had found out and forced her to shut it down. The catch, Taylor claimed, was that Taylor’s mother was the executor of the family’s account and forbid Taylor from spending that money.
Wade began paying Juan himself. After all, Juan was a longtime friend and needed a job.
“The day she told me Shona had put a stop to the spending and the equipment was pretty much stolen, the work wasn’t gonna happen, Juan broke down crying. He had four kids and couldn’t go without a job,” Wade said.
Still, Wade didn’t question much about Taylor’s finances. The family dynamics seemed baffling and complicated; likely something he didn’t want to get involved with. He wouldn’t have much of a choice, though. Sometimes someone doesn’t know they’ve stepped into a gnarled trap until the agonizing teeth are already bone deep into their skin, and they don’t know how to tear it off.
Only a couple of weeks into dating, Taylor promised to give Wade a deed to 800 acres of land.
“I’m kinda blown away,” Griffin would say during the trial. “I really didn’t know what to think. It all sounded good, I just couldn’t believe it was coming on so fast. Her parents texting me, her grandparents texting me telling me, ‘You get married, and this is what you’re pretty much looking at.’”
It didn’t end there. In August 2019, mere weeks into the relationship, Wade came home from work to find baby stuff on the counter. He didn’t know at that point about Taylor’s hysterectomy and that she couldn’t bear a child.
“I’m pretty much pregnant,” she told him, adding that she was having twins.
For one reason or another, Taylor didn’t carry on the deception of this pregnancy for the full nine months. Weeks later, she used a VOIP app to pose as her father, Mark Morton, to text Wade. “Mark” said that his bush hog was totaled after being in a wreck. Taylor told Wade she and someone she claimed to be a family friend, “Jace”, were helping Morton when the winch snapped and a towing cable struck her in the stomach, “hurting one of the babies.”
This was just one of her deceptions. She had never been pregnant, the wreck story was a lie, as was the ruse of losing the twins. It was only the beginning.
Her claws were in, and she kept tightening her grip — but not everyone fell into the trap
While Taylor’s honey-sweet demeanor and charm soaked into Wade, people around him found something in the taste of her just a little off.
On top of taking Taylor home to his parents, Wade also introduced his new girlfriend to his boss, Roger Pate, from Atlas Roofing. Roger and his wife, Angela, moved to Simms in the spring of 2018, after which they met Wade and he began working for Roger. During the trial, Angela recalled how she and Roger went for dinner with Wade and Taylor at a restaurant. Angela described an “over-the-top” friendliness from Taylor that seemed off-putting and, in Angela’s opinion, suspicious.
Taylor mentioned her fears of Wade leaving her to Angela, which only deepened the questions about Taylor’s intentions.
“You could tell he didn’t feel that same way about her. She was so giddy. It was like she was trying to buy him,” Angela said.
Even Connie didn’t let Taylor’s initial charm blind her to the red flags slowly making themselves known. Right away, Connie witnessed that Taylor and Wade appeared to have different views of the relationship.
“She seemed to want a close relationship. I could not tell if he wanted that or was standing back. There were some red flags. One was that she didn’t have custody of her son,” Connie said.
Perhaps Taylor sensed Wade’s cautious trepidation, too, and realized that becoming an instant housewife wouldn’t be enough to keep him in her clutches. Wade had a decent job which supported him in ways Taylor’s office jobs could not. If being a loving homemaker wasn’t enough, she couldn’t have children, and she didn’t have money to buy his love, then she’d surely lose him once he decided he might have been better and happier on his own.
That is, unless, she could convince him that she, Taylor Parker, was the only woman who could offer him the world.
Connie recalled that Taylor began talking of her family’s oil and gas money early on. Taylor spoke of how she was to inherit millions of dollars from her grandfather, who apparently had some oil wells.
By Christmas, Taylor seemed to have found a way to give Wade the world — or at least make it seem so. At the holiday family get-together, Taylor and Wade made a huge announcement: they were about to purchase a McCurtain County property called Pecan Point. The $4.7 million home was located along the Red River. Taylor had offered $3.5 million for the home with a $200,000 down payment.
Taylor had told Wade she had $6 million with which she wanted buy land and make money off it. Wade first suggested Pecan Point. He’d worked for the property owner before.
“She was glowing whenever I told her about Pecan Point and where it was and all that good stuff,” Wade said.
Taylor had reached out to real estate agent Rusty Lowe in early December regarding the property. She presented herself as the heiress of the Blackburn syrup fortune, according to Lowe. Taylor and Wade came out to view the property, and both names were on the contract. After that, Lowe mainly dealt with Taylor through texts and only sometimes phone calls. Taylor signed the contract with her last name hyphenated to Parker-Griffin despite the fact she and Wade weren’t married.
At the Christmas family function, the couple handed out cards with a pecan taped to each to the duck hunters of the family, and informed them they would never have to worry about obtaining a hunting lease again. Connie took a video of the moment. Taylor ensured she made a big show of her supposed wealth in front of Wade’s family, making them love her and in turn, convincing Wade to stick with her. And now with a home worth millions, a happy family, and a financially stable future, how could he not?
“So that made me excited. It had a lot of grass cows and stuff on it,” Griffin said of the purchase.
“It was pretty much a dream come true.”
In the Christmas video, Taylor tells the family that she and Wade made a deal with the doctor from whom they bought the property that they would use it to its full potential. In fact, Taylor said, she’d already created an LLC for it and changed the name to Pecan Bend. It was an ecstatic moment for everyone.
Lowe would testify that Taylor and Wade’s interest in the property seemed “urgent”. He noted that they showed up to the viewing in a vehicle that “kind of didn’t match the situation”, but added he wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Because of his willingness to extend such a benefit, Lowe spent the next four months trying to verify funds for the down payment. Each source of funding continually fell through. He dealt with supposed bank employees via email and could never get anyone on the phone to have an actual conversation with.
After the fall through of a $7 million payment which Taylor claimed was to be transferred from her inheritance, she tried convincing Lowe that she’d get the money from the oil and gas leases, instead. It never surfaced. Taylor moved on to claim that her Uncle Butch would pay for it. She’d now tried to buy two other properties as part of the deal totaling about $20 million. Lowe received two separate checks from her for $150,000 each, though she quickly asked for them back. She claimed in a text message that her bank had advised her to wire the fund instead.
Lowe never saw that money, either.
During Lowe’s testimony, the prosecutor showed emails, wire transfer receipts, a copy of the oil and gas lease, and letters from supposed contacts of Taylor’s bank and her uncle’s bank.
Lowe consulted a landman regarding the oil and gas lease. The landman looked it over, called it “red hot”, and informed Lowe that it wasn’t legitimate. In truth, the oil and gas wells Taylor’s grandfather did own only brought in a few hundred dollars each month.
Still, Lowe didn’t know this detail, and remained as accommodating as he could. In yet another effort to verify anything Taylor had told him, Lowe reached out to who he believed was someone representing Taylor from Shell Western Global, Shelly Linx.
Linx supposedly verified $370 million in funds to come through via wire transfer. And yet, Lowe could find no trace such a woman ever existed. In court, the prosecution showed emails supposedly sent from Linx, from shellylinx.westernglobal@aol.com. Even Taylor’s defense would point out that such vital correspondence from a global energy company wouldn’t come from an AOL email address.
Lowe said Taylor would “scold” him for reaching out in such a manner. After Lowe tried contacting her Uncle Butch, Taylor’s scolding came with text messages filled with indignation.
“After talking to my dad and attorney, whom have bought land for more than this, it was stated to me the seller can ask but you don’t have to ask them to verify what we have in bank,” Taylor lectured. “Wade and myself both weren’t ok with him calling for all that. my Uncle Butch is a multimillion-dollar land owner and he says he has asked and been denied.”
Linx supposedly also emailed Lowe, relaying similar information.
“Banking information is completely confidential. The buyers were not under the assumption a verification letter was required until you requested it in your office. I am sending this verification form since I will be providing funds. Funds and where they come from is not of importance as long as the seller is paid from my understanding. The clients are not ok with a seller calling their bank and are firm on their decision in that matter,” the email read.
Lowe told the court that it’s true a real estate agent won’t always verify banking information in this manner, but considering the multiple delays and red flags, he noted it wasn’t unreasonable. Taylor’s defense attorney would claim that Lowe continued pursuing the sale because he had a commission worth $1.15 million on the line. It’s a lot of money to lose should a sale fall through.
The deal was off for good, Lowe said, when Taylor texted him in late April 2020 to inform him that her mother had made the whole thing up, and no sale was to happen. None of the avenues of money had ever existed. Taylor was telling a partial truth here. The money, the inheritance, and the rich family members never existed. But it wasn’t her mother trying to dupe the world into believing Taylor was the wealthy heiress she claimed to be. Even the supposed attorney Taylor dealt with, Blake Lawington, never existed. Lowe had wasted four months of his life and staked a high commission on this sale, only for it to vanish before his eyes. It had to be a crushing realization.
Even worse, Lowe came to believe that Wade wasn’t even in on the scam.
“He was excited and energetic about it but came to fall back a bit when he started to doubt the money was going to come through,” Lowe testified.
He added that Wade would call him and ask if the funds had come through yet, leading Lowe to believe that Taylor wasn’t even providing accurate information to her boyfriend.
“He was very concerned,” Lowe noted.
Wade said he received dozens of emails daily containing official-looking documents. Yet the checks Taylor tried to cash never went through. Wade tried to cash a check at his own bank for $8 million, only to be told money in that amount was usually transferred by wire.
“I didn’t know what to think. I had never received or dealt with anything that large,” Wade said, adding that he presumed banks usually had trouble dealing with amounts of money that high.
Lowe also discussed how Wade seemed specifically interested in the possession of the recreation rights of the property for duck and hog hunting. It makes sense — Taylor had put the pressure on at Christmas when she told Wade’s family they would have unlimited access to such hunting. Breaking the bad news that it wouldn’t happen would be both embarrassing and saddening.
Taylor’s defense questioned why Lowe would have pursued the deal for four months when something clearly seemed off, but the prosecution took advantage of such an inquiry to ask the real estate agent just how convincing Taylor seemed to be.
“The implication in the courtroom this week has been that these invented people or the lies themselves are so fantastical that people would have to be ignorant to buy into it. Have you ever seen someone or encountered someone like Taylor Parker that was so convincing in conning you?” First District Attorney Kelley Crisp asked.
“No, I’ve never encountered anyone like this. She believed it. There’s no doubt in my mind she believed it,” Lowe replied.
This failure didn’t deter Taylor from continuing to try buying over Wade and his family. Connie explained that Taylor “bought” her a metallic gray Nissan Altima Platinum car as a surprise. She was shocked and excited about the gift, since the car was exactly what she had wanted.
A few weeks in, though, Taylor called Wade and told him that Connie needed to bring it to her place immediately and park it in the driveway. Taylor claimed the dealership was going to pick it up due to a recall on the brake pedal.
“In my mind, I’m thinking dealerships don’t come to your home and pick up a vehicle on a recall. It just doesn’t happen,” Connie told the courtroom. She relived the conversation she had with her husband on the drive over.
“I’m telling you, we’ll never see this car again. He said, ‘You don’t know that.’ I said, ‘Yeah I know it. I do know that. Dealerships don’t pick up vehicles on a recall.’ It just didn’t make any sense.”
When Connie heard nothing about the car two or three weeks later, she called the dealership, who confirmed her suspicions. Just like the property, the funding for the car never came through. It had been repossessed, not recalled.
“That’s when I realized there was something seriously wrong,” Connie said.
Taylor even tried throwing money at Wade’s dad with a promise to build him a new barn to replace the one that burned down. Of course, this never came to fruition, either. Connie had watched the Pecan Point deal, the car purchase, and now the barn rebuild all fall through, leaving Taylor’s extravagant promises in shambles. It could only spell doom for Connie’s son.
It didn’t stop Taylor and Wade from spending the dollars they didn’t have, though. They splurged on a custom side-by-side ATV worth $29,000, Wade’s new $92,000 heavy duty truck, and about 20 head of cattle Wade purchased for $21,000 in Sulphur Springs at a sale. Wade presumed he’d have space for them on the ranch he and Taylor were supposedly buying.
Yet when the dust settled, Wade’s dreams remained empty shells of Taylor’s lies. By January 2020, Wade was crushed with debt and Taylor’s expectations of their relationship.
“I want you to take into consideration on my part you haven’t touched me, kissed me or anything in over a month. It’s lonely and that’s something I need in our relationship. You used to do it so I’d like it back,” Taylor told him in one text message.
“I’ll pass,” Wade replied. The initial attraction had died quickly.
“Guess I’m just not a very affectionate, hands-on kinda guy, I guess you would say,” Wade testified later. “Plus, all the financial issues, all these fake people texting me, promising me, promising me that, and just constantly letting me down. I just wasn’t attracted. To the point where I was thinking, ‘This has got to be a trap.’”
“It was decent at the beginning,” he continued. “We were intimate a few times at the beginning. But all the rumors, the job, I’d financed the truck and the side-by-side, financed the cows, and it was all falling on my shoulders and I think I just got in way over my head.”
Taylor seemed to enjoy letting him drown, as it meant she kept him cocooned in her intricate web. In February 2020, she wove another suffocating layer around him: she told she was pregnant again.
“When she told me, I was kinda in shock, but it come at the same time I had been telling her we are not financially able to keep everything we had done bought, it was ripping my bank account, none of the money was coming through and she knew I was getting pretty depressed over it,” Wade admitted.
Still, Wade held out hope that her talk of money would come true. She offered to pay to upgrade his old tractor, and they left the dealership with a $63,000 tractor she offered to finance.
“And I said well, ‘We done got enough stuff already that I’m having to pay for and I don’t wanna have to finance something else.’ And she reassured me she would handle the tractor deal,” Wade said.
He didn’t seem surprised when the tractor was repossessed and the cashier’s check turned out to be fake.
“I told her, ‘Just like everything else, the money’s not coming through again.’”
He went on to explain that he was friends with the dealership owners and felt like he was letting people down.
“It was just throwing my name out there. ‘Wade done bought this, couldn’t pay for it, bought that, couldn’t pay for it.’ Just made me look bad all around.”
Taylor told him that her family was dividing up the land and she and Wade were supposed to get part of it. He dared to raise his hopes once more. Taylor claimed her aunt, Katie Jo, confirmed via text that the family was on board with the idea, even willing to give the couple extra land to have cows on.
These conversations, too, were all fabricated by Taylor in her tapestry of deceit.
Taylor even threw her own mother into the frays of a complicating web
Shona, despite her unconditional support of Taylor through all of her medical problems, also became the center of her daughter’s illusions.
The Pates noticed this almost right away. Taylor wasted little time in involving the Pates in her own family drama in yet another ploy to remain the center of attention.
Taylor explained that she was the unwanted daughter to a mother who hated and resented her, and repeated the narrative that her family came from old money spouting from oil and gas wells. The royalties “came in all the time”, Taylor would claim. Her grandfather, from whom she was supposed to get a massive inheritance, was sick and couldn’t care for his farm properly. Taylor said she was the only one of the family offering him any help. After this, Taylor’s grandmother supposedly opened the bank account in order to help clean the property up.
Pate noted, however, that Taylor didn’t appear as a woman who had money. Taylor simply said her parents wanted her to be normal amid her other claims that her mother mistreated her. Taylor fed the Pates all sorts of lines. Wade would get control of the property if something happened to Taylor. Shona, who Taylor said mistreated her growing up, didn’t like Wade and believed he was only dating Taylor for the money.
Taylor accused Shona of taking $3 million out of her account and running off with it because of her dislike of Wade. In an even more startling accusation, Taylor claimed that a police officer named Cobern had informed her that Shona had put a hit out on Taylor and her life was in danger. Taylor added that Cobern told her the Mexican mafia was somehow involved.
“Everything I’m gonna tell you sounds bizarre,” Angela said in court. “And it’s so much that it’s hard to keep straight, but I’m going to do try my best to tell you what a rational person thinks was going on when they’re hearing these things.”
Taylor even hid out in the Pate home, claiming there were undercover officers keeping the residence under surveillance 24/7. Taylor would appear to text them before leaving the house to ensure it was safe to do so, and told the Pates there were cameras fixed all over the house.
Angela said she never saw anyone when coming and going, though.
This only ended when Taylor informed the Pates that the middleman her mother allegedly hired had been caught and incarcerated. Taylor would show the Pates texts of her conversing with Cobern about investigation updates. Finally, Cobern informed her that her mother had committed suicide after being taken into custody.
Angela questioned what happened to the body, but Taylor, in her usual fashion, had a story for it.
“You never doubted her. She had answers for everything,” Angela remarked.
In a bizarre twist, Taylor would later say that her supposedly deceased mother showed up at Christmas dinner, very much alive. Instead of having an answer for that, Taylor simply brushed it off by saying the family was shocked as they believed she had been dead.
Later, Angela found a strange email in her junk mail folder, apparently from Taylor’s mother, a woman named Mandy Boyd.
“Listen you know nothing about Taylor. Don’t try to be a mother figure to her. I did an amazing job making her look bad. It took time and accurantely planning my ever step of the way. She brought you to the bank and made herself look like she was lying to get a check cashed. I had already arranged everything. My helper knew she was coming with you because she called making sure. You wasted your time on her because that check was never good. Let her fail in life. Let her see what it’s like to have nothing. I’ve worked it out perfectly. I’ve arranged this all so there are cracks you see. Things won’t add up and she will look even more like a liar. I stole numbers to make her think people were calling and doing things for her and it was never them. This will not end well for her. No matter where she turns or what she says there wil be a like to fall back on her. See I am going to send her in such deep of a depression she will probably try to kill herself like she has tried before. But if not then making Wade leave will do the trick. See he will have no choice but the leave because nothing will be true. I’ve made his family turn on them from pretending to be people like a dealership that didn’t get paid. Does it click now to you people? Just let her fall into a hole and not get out. She will go crazy thinking she did the right thing for a curtain reason but in reality I made her think that way. She has a way of wanting to protect everyone. Well that’s what got her into this mess. If you want to be her mom good luck. She is like the child we should have terminated in the beginning because she was the accident I didn’t want. Maybe you will get the big picture and enjoy the mess. She King’s for someone to love her and when Wade leaves because I’ve made her out to be a liar well she’ll come running to you. Jus twatch. Nice website and Facebook. Maybe you can pop some sense into her because she has none.”
When Angela testified about discovering the email had actually been from Taylor herself, she became emotional on the stand.
“It was so real, and it was so chaotic.”
The questionable pregnancy
When it became clear Taylor didn’t have the money she claimed, and creating the illusion her life was in danger didn’t make Wade cling to her, having a baby became Taylor’s next obsession, despite the fact she couldn’t conceive one.
She told Angela that she believed having a baby would mean the world to him, and it would bring them closer together. Of all the things Taylor believed would make Wade love her, her ability to do so was as empty as the possibility of being a wealthy heiress.
Taylor had no money, no grand ranch, no way to shower extravagant gifts on Wade and his family, and no uterus with which to carry a child. At her office job at the OBGYN clinic, she must have watched many expectant mothers come in and out, glowing and ecstatic about their baby to come, engaged with them at the front desk with that ever so charming smile and effervescence. Yet she had to be churning with envy and rage at the fact she couldn’t be them. She couldn’t be carrying a child that would keep Wade in her life. She couldn’t ever move past being the doting girlfriend to become the mother of his child, the center of his life, the one thing that would keep them permanently connected. The one thing that would force Wade to remain in her life.
But she had created the illusion with the money, and convincingly so. Why not a pregnancy?
As a master manipulator, Taylor thought out her plots, even if she didn’t fully consider the end game or what to do when people uncovered the truth. It isn’t clear if this is where she first thought about how to obtain an actual baby when the nine months were up, if she began scouting pregnant women at the clinic she worked at, or within her social circles. Did she target Reagan right away due to the timing, or was it merely convenient that the women knew each other when Taylor hatched this mortifying plot?
In part three, we’ll explore the desperate measures Taylor Parker took in order to ensure the pregnancy seemed legitimate, those who questioned if it was real, those who knew it was fake and remained silent, and how the truth didn’t crash in all at once until Reagan lay dead on her living room floor, Taylor had taken the baby from the womb, and even she had to finally admit the ruse was all over.
Part 1 can be found here.
Sources
KTAL
https://www.ktalnews.com/news/crime/audacious-tales-schemes-dominate-taylor-parker-trial/
https://www.ktalnews.com/news/crime/taylor-parker-trial/ex-boyfriend-takes-stand-in-taylor-parker-capital-murder-trial/
https://www.ktalnews.com/news/crime/boyfriends-mother-there-were-red-flags-in-sons-relationship-with-taylor-parker/?ipid=promo-link-block5