The Case Files: Taylor Parker (part 5, final)
The grand illusions of her perfect life left a woman and her unborn baby dead, and landed her on death row
Taylor Parker is a woman who’s deceptions, illusions, and elaborate schemes seemingly date back to her childhood, when she faked one medical ailment or set of symptoms after another. Still, it’s difficult to fathom how a young girl who was perhaps too attention-deprived by her divorced parents, a father who remained distant, and a mother who worked a lot, could in her late twenties fake a pregnancy, horrifically murder a woman, and abduct the baby to call as her own.
Where did it start? Where does it end? Did she fake the strokes or was that one thing she legitimately struggled with amid all her over-dramatizations of other medical problems? If so, do untreated strokes impact a young person’s brain, and therefore their psychology, negatively? Did it trigger a personality disorder or was that always lying underneath the surface, waiting for the right time to take over and spiral out of control?
Could the so-called complicated migraines have impacted something? What led her to such an extravagant falsity despite the number of people who knew it wasn’t possible? If she wasn’t mentally ill, then did she believe her own lies?
Why did Taylor feel the need to murder Reagan Hancock and steal her baby, instead of ending the ridiculous charade with a miscarriage she could have performed just as dramatically as she did the pregnancy?
I am not a criminal psychologist, just someone who loves reading and writing about it, but I don’t think Taylor Parker can be characterized by one diagnosis or set of symptoms. Dr. Michael Arambula, a real criminal psychologist who testified at the trial after reviewing records and the entire case, diagnosed Taylor with borderline personality disorder (BPD). But I think her psychology is so much more complicated than that.
Now, before I go any further, I always have to add this disclaimer: At this blog, we don’t shame or stigmatize mental disorders or illnesses. We don’t generalize. The majority of people who suffer from BPD and other personality disorders do not become violent and they certainly don’t all become killers. They are human, like the rest of us, and are more than their diagnosis.
I believe the same about Taylor. I don’t believe the diagnosis of BPD is the only reason she turned out like she did.
It becomes so easy to throw those labels around. Borderline. Narcissistic. Anti-social personality. Psychopath. Sociopath. All tossed around true crime circles in ways meant to make them sound sinister. And sometimes, these people are. But behind those labels, one can usually find a life brimming with trauma and other factors that accumulate and snowball until that person breaks.
At the end of the day, at the end of every case, these are disorders, not motives. Taylor didn’t kill Reagan because she had BPD. The motive runs so much deeper, and it is that we will explore to conclude this series.
Childhood factors: How health problems, her parent’s divorce, and an alleged sexual assault created a girl desperate to be seen
There is no question that something is terribly wrong with Taylor Parker. And yet, Dr. Arambula, despite diagnosing her with BPD, testified in court that she is not mentally ill.
There is a difference between mental illnesses and personality disorders. The American Psychiatry Association (APA) defines mental illnesses as “health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental illnesses can be associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities.”
“Mental illness refers collectively to all diagnosable mental disorders,” the APA notes. This encompasses things like eating disorders, bipolar, dissociative disorders, mood disorders, substance abuse, and more.
Bill Eddy, writing for Psychology Today, notes that mental illness impairs thinking and behaviour “without much personal control.” For example, someone with severe depression might seem to have a great life, but something inside still might urge them to harm or kill themselves. This was a massive discussion in the filicide series I previously wrote. The mothers who murdered their children while suffering from postpartum depression or psychosis had little to no control over their thoughts and actions during the crime. In a normal state, they never would have harmed their kids. But under the psychosis of postpartum, they did just that.
Someone with a personality disorder, however, remains aware of their activity and whether it is right or wrong.
“To be classified as a personality disorder, one's way of thinking, feeling and behaving deviates from the expectations of the culture, causes distress or problems functioning, and lasts over time,” the APA explains. “The pattern of experience and behavior usually begins by late adolescence or early adulthood and causes distress or problems in functioning. Without treatment, personality disorders can be long-lasting.”
Eddy adds that those “with personality disorders are often seen as having control over their own behavior, which frustrates family and friends.”
Taylor knew what she was doing. It was why she went to such great lengths to ensure her tracks were covered and that her illusions seemed verifiable down to the last detail. She knew who she could keep silenced about the fake pregnancy and who to block on social media to keep them at bay. She knew how to keep Wade confused and exhausted enough to not question her. She is calculating, cunning, and deviant.
Most disturbingly, she is aware. She is aware of what she is doing and accepts it as necessary for her. To be aware of her actions and murder Reagan the way she did adds yet another mortifying layer to an already shocking case.
Specifically, the APA defines BPD as “a pattern of instability in personal relationships, intense emotions, poor self-image and impulsivity. A person with borderline personality disorder may go to great lengths to avoid being abandoned, have repeated suicide attempts, display inappropriate intense anger, or have ongoing feelings of emptiness.”
The need to not be abandoned and the ongoing feelings of emptiness are the two things which highlight Taylor’s mindset, as they seemed to have stirred within her when she was young. Trauma and associated mental or emotional problems usually come to people with poisoned roots of those who came before, digging deeper the more generations they’re allowed to impact.
From third grade, Taylor would have learned that her medical issues garnered her much attention from her mother and doctors. While it’s possible Taylor had legitimate stomach issues as a child, this may have been stress-related. Her mother, Shonna, admitted in court that she and her ex-husband, Morton, would argue in front of the kids during the divorce. But marriages don’t break down overnight. The foundation crumbles over time as minuscule cracks become giant fractures. It’s likely that Shonna and Morton were fighting in front of their kids long before they went separate ways.
Taylor was 12 when her parents finally divorced. Zachery, Taylor’s brother, revealed that Morton would often use the kids as pawns and put himself before taking care of the children, despite the fact that Taylor spent more time with him, and even went to live with him instead of her mother.
This would have created an environment for both kids in which they felt caught in the middle. It’s easy for kids watching their parents meltdown amid a bitter divorce and believe the adults care more about themselves than they do for their children who are suffering.
A study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in 2006, titled “Feeling Caught Between Parents” by Paul R. Amato and Tamara D. Afifi, discusses how “interparental conflict following divorce was related to feeling caught between parents, and feeling caught between parents, in turn, was related to adolescents’ depression and deviance.”
“Adolescents who adjusted best were those with parents who engaged in cooperative parenting in the postdivorce period,” Amato and Afifi note, adding that adolescents adjust much better “when parents maintain clear boundaries, encapsulate conflict, and avoid exposing their children to overt conflict.”
They also note that parent-child relationships can be similarly impacted by conflict in marriages that don’t end in divorce, as well. A high-conflict marriage will damage parent-child relationships before the divorce even happens.
This is likely what happened between Taylor and her parents. The conflict when her parents were together had become the family norm. When they split up, they continued fighting in front of Taylor and her brother, which must have felt like nothing changed at all.
According to Amato and Afifi, children who feel caught in between their parents have three options when it comes to dealing with the situation: they can try to maintain a positive relationship with both parents, form an alliance with one parent over the other, or reject both parents.
“Feeling caught in the middle was associated with weaker ties to mothers, weaker ties to fathers, and lower well-being,” Amato and Afifi write.
The findings from this study suggested “that feeling caught between parents was especially detrimental to the mother-daughter relationship.”
Taylor created an alliance with her father sometime before or after the divorce. She would remain with Morton when he moved to his mother’s home. After this, Taylor would make Shonna a villain at the center of all the supposed drama in Taylor’s life. Morton, however, would weave around Taylor’s wrath unscathed.
Amato and Afifi note that when adolescents become adults, contact with parents becomes less frequent, and it becomes easier to heal from the damage of the divorce and parental conflict. In venturing out on their own, the offspring from the marriage don’t feel so in-between their parents’ hostility towards each other. Feeling caught in the middle can carry on into adulthood, but “but becomes weaker over time and largely disappears after 10 years.”
When children of divorced parents in this study were asked how often they “felt that being closer to one parent meant being less close to the other parent,” they responded that they felt this much less often than those with high-conflict parents still married. This study indicates that as children get older, the sensation that they’re caught in the middle should dissolve.
But for some reason, Taylor clung to the family drama by making her mother out to be the bad guy. She kept herself in the middle. Perhaps that’s where she knew she could get the most attention from both parents, and rake in sympathy from others.
The alleged sexual assault
Psychologist Dr. Timothy Proctor evaluated Taylor for 10.5 hours, during which time Taylor informed him that she had been sexually assaulted at the age of 12, around the time her parents divorced. She also claimed to have created an imaginary friend she named “Coraline,” though Dr. Proctor noted she did not have multiple personalities.
Taylor alleged that a family friend committed the sexual assault. She claimed her parents did nothing to help her emotionally and mentally in the aftermath. This came from the testimony of Austin-based Licensed Master Social Worker and Advanced Practitioner Lauren Elmore, who also evaluated Taylor.
She spent five hours interviewing Taylor with a focus on Taylor’s childhood trauma and the factors which may have led to Taylor murdering Reagan Hancock.
Taylor claimed the sexual assault took place at a drug house her dad took her to, but Zachery said he didn’t remember his sister ever being there when his dad took him there. Elmore stated she found Taylor’s recollection of the assault to be believable and didn’t hold the outrageous exaggerations her other lies and stories often held.
“All I know is, the rape as a child doesn’t have a lot of the features of the adult fantastic lies. It all seems legitimate about how a man would approach a child,” Elmore told the prosecution.
Taylor went on to tell Elmore that at the hospital, Taylor’s grandmother told the doctor not to report the assault; allegedly more concerned about the family’s reputation than what had just happened to the little girl with her. Taylor never named the abuser.
Weirdly aware of herself, Taylor even told Dr. Proctor that she had begun living a lie which got to the point where she didn’t know right from wrong, and that “half the stuff she lied about, a logical person wouldn’t believe.”
Dr. Proctor agreed with Dr. Michael Arambula in that Taylor doesn’t have any mental illness, but she does present as someone with a “significant personality disturbance.”
A third doctor also evaluated Taylor over the span of two five-hour sessions. Dr. Edward Gripon, a psychiatrist from Beaumont, Texas, testified for the defense as to whether or not Taylor would continue to be a danger to society if she were to remain in society.
In his review, he found Taylor to exhibit symptoms of not only BPD, but also those of narcissistic, antisocial, and histrionic personality disorders.
He said she is antisocial “because she has done things that are clearly illegal. Histrionic, that’s open mouth and lots of noise. And narcissistic people who are very self-centered, attention-seeking so that the light shines on them, and that even when they do bad things, and they get attention from that, they get pleasure from that.”
Dr. Gripon noted it is a long list of symptoms that can’t lead to any one diagnosis of any of the above, but pathological lying alone cannot be diagnosed as a standalone condition according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
And to be fair, some symptoms in the trio of BPD, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), and histrionic personality disorder (HPD) tend to overlap. According to the Cleveland Clinic, they’re all cluster B disorders as per the DSM-5, as is antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). All are marked with difficulty in regulating emotions, low self-esteem, relationship difficulties, and the need to be noticed by others.
The difference appears to be in how they deal with that need to be noticed. Someone with NPD with have an exaggerated sense of grandiosity and superiority, while on the inside they are poisoned by a sense of worthlessness they project onto others. It is sort of a protective shield they put up to avoid emotional vulnerability and accountability. NPD and ASPD both share the person having a lack of remorse or empathy towards others. The big aspect of NPD is the difficulty with rejection or being criticized. A damaged ego seems like the end of the world to someone with this disorder.
Someone with HPD will feel under-appreciated or depressed when they aren’t the center of attention.
“The main feature of histrionic personality disorder is displaying excessive, superficial emotionality and sexuality to draw attention to themselves,” according to the Cleveland Clinic website.
A person with HPD will also have shallow and quickly-changing emotions, and a “larger than life” presence, be persistently charming and flirtatious, be overly concerned with their physical appearance, all symptoms shared with NPD
They will also be wildly dramatic and “extremely emotionally expressive” to the point of humiliating friends and family. And without instant gratification, one with HPD will become easily bored.
BPD throws into the mix the fear of abandonment, persistent feelings of emptiness, and more issues with an unstable self-image and rapid mood changes. Impulsive or dangerous behavior, or even self-harm, can plague someone with this disorder.
Since Taylor has such a baffling mixture of all of these cluster-B disorders, it’s hard to pinpoint one with which to diagnose her, but BPD would be the closest in accuracy since her behavior is highlighted by a need to be seen, fear of abandonment and feelings of persistent emptiness. We don’t have a clear picture of any childhood trauma, but there was clearly something. These personality disorders don’t sprout from nowhere. Taylor had a blatant fear of abandonment; a desperate need for admiration, approval and attention; the yearning to be the center of attention; a severe lack of remorse and empathy; the constant need to lie and be believed even when her lies were so clearly deceptions; persistent feelings of emptiness, and impulsive and dangerous behaviors.
From being young and experiencing all sorts of health issues that made her miss school, to her parents’ tumultuous marriage and bitter divorce, to moving in with a grandmother who coped with life using food and then becoming overweight herself, to never being able to hang onto a relationship, and then finally, the tubal litigation and then hysterectomy, all of these could have collided within the young girl to leave her feeling empty and abandoned. Her mother would have had to work more on a single income. Her father seemed to prefer drug houses over his kids and wasn’t financially stable. She struggled with self-image issues every time she looked in the mirror. And if someone sexually assaulted her when she was 12, it would add another layer of trauma to her childhood no 12-year-old knows how to deal with. Then, to be silenced by those who should have protected her could have left her feeling even more empty and abandoned.
So, where did start?
What stood out to me was Taylor believing she had a stroke in 2015, complete with one side of her face drooping and her complaints of migraines. It doesn’t seem terribly likely she was faking this one, given that she had the drooping face. I believe this may be, however, where many of her serious behavioral problems began.
Doctors never diagnosed a stroke, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that something was going on. Health Direct lists a few potential things that could cause one’s face to droop on one side, which are mainly conditions which damage the nerves on one side of the face, or damage to the part of the brain that controls those nerves.
Bell’s Palsy: A sudden weakness or paralysis to one side of the face cause by damage or inflammation to the nerves. This is a temporary condition from which most people recover in three to six months. It is thought to be caused mainly by viral infections.
Brain tumours
Strokes
Complications from surgeries
Facial injuries
During her two week stay at the hospital following Thanksgiving 2015, doctors allegedly only diagnosed Taylor with complicated migraines. Science Direct says that this is a “syndrome where the recurrent headache is preceded or accompanied by a significant stereotyped neurological deficit, mainly hemiplegia or language difficulties (aphasia). Motor symptoms or aphasia most often resolve in 24 hours, but sometimes can persist as long as 72 hours.”
All of these can present what is called a stroke mimic. A stroke mimic, according to the Hillcrest Medical Center website, is a condition that presents with stroke-like symptoms but is caused by another, non-vascular issue.
Science Direct also notes a difficulty in diagnosing these due to similarities with ischemic strokes. Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary defines ischemia as a deficient supply of blood caused by an obstruction to blood flow to a body part (like the heart or brain) due to the narrowing of arteries by spasm or disease. Those organs or body parts stop working and begin to die. An ischemic stroke happens as a result of such a blockage.
A regular stroke occurs when a blood clot ruptures or causes the obstruction of blood flow.
Bell’s Palsy wouldn’t account for Taylor’s erratic behaviors, nor necessarily cause the brain changes that would trigger such. The last four options are possibilities, but Shonna testified that doctors did all kinds of scans and tests. Tumours and strokes would have shown up. She hadn’t had any surgeries since she last gave birth and had the tubal litigation done. Nor are there any accounts of facial or head injuries that we know of.
It leaves a stroke, stroke mimic, or the migraines as the potential culprits if indeed her brain underwent some sort of changes as a result of medical issues.
If her condition was indeed as diagnosed, and complicated migraines (or complex migraines) were to blame, then how might they have impacted any personality or behavior changes?
According to WebMD, it is possible for complicated migraines to cause white matter lesions. White matter is tissue deep in the brain which plays a huge part in emotions. Small white matter lesions are part of aging. But strokes and Alzheimer’s can also cause them to form.
Migraines can also cause infarct-like lesions. Infarct is a small area of dead tissue that can be left when blood flow is restricted or stopped and brain cells die as a result. These lesions are silent and have no symptoms.
New York City neuropsychologist Dr. Siddartha Nadkarni testified during the trial to state that Taylor has “frontal lobe syndrome.”
“Something is very wrong with her brain, yes,” Dr. Nadkarni said. He had ordered all new brains scans and an EEG for Taylor in March 2022. MRI and CT scan results were shown in court, during which Dr. Nadkarni pointed out gaps in Taylor’s brain he attributed to white and gray matter in the areas which dictate behavior and executive function.
Frontal lobe syndrome would certainly explain why Taylor Parker cannot be diagnosed with just one personality disorder, as so many symptoms overlap. Nadkarni noted that the brain tissue most impacted within Taylor’s brain is in the frontal and temporal lobes. This impairs emotional responses and one’s ability to tell right from wrong, as well as emotional regulation and decision-making. Nadkarni compared it to an alcoholic who loses inhibition of these functions when drinking. He noted that on the EEG scan, several areas of her brain appear abnormal, explaining that impaired brain matter means fewer neurons fire off, causing this behavior.
“It means that part of the brain is not working. It’s broken. I would say this is severe dysfunction. It’s hard to lose neurons in your scan. That means something,” he said.
He added that this has been a long-term occurrence in her brain, though he cannot pinpoint when it started. But, he said, this type of thing cannot be faked.
It seems to circle around back to Taylor’s migraines and possible stroke or mimic stroke. A 2018 study found that while it is a small number of people overall who experience severe personality changes from frontal lobe syndrome, such changes can occur.
“‘Frontal lobe syndrome’? Subtypes of acquired personality disturbances in patients with focal brain damage” explored the long-standing theory that frontal lobe injuries could cause personality and emotional disturbances in someone who never previously exhibited such behaviors. They broke it down into five subtypes:
Executive disturbances subtype: This is characterized by poor judgment, lack of initiative, lack of planning, indecisiveness, and lack of stamina. Moderate disturbances also included inflexibility, perseverative behavior, lack of persistence, impatience, being easily over-whelmed, social inappropriateness, apathy and lack of insight. This subtype made up about 31.3% of the group studied.
Emotional dysregulation and disturbed social behavior subtype: The study suggests, based on their cluster analysis, that both emotional dysregulation and disturbing behavior go hand-in hand together in one disturbance instead of existing separately. Despite being a small group, “the disturbances were the most severe of any seen for any group by either CA approach.” The most prevalent behaviors found here were: perseverative behavior, poor judgment, impulsivity, indecisiveness, social inappropriateness, insensitivity, irritability, impatience, lability, inflexibility, social withdrawal, anxiety, depression, easily overwhelmed, lack of stamina, suspiciousness, obsessiveness. This made up about 34.4% of the sample.
Hypo-emotionality and de-energization subtype: This is considered the milder of the disturbances, highlighted by apathy, blunted effect, lack of initiative, social withdrawal, low stamina, deficient planning, indecisiveness, and poor judgment. This accounted for about 15%-20% of the sample studied.
Distressed subtype: Anxiety overrides depression in this subtype, accompanied by dependency, being easily overwhelmed, lack of initiative, indecisiveness, poor planning, and lack of stamina. Apathy wasn’t significantly disturbed in this subtype, nor were there severe disturbances in emotional dysregulation, socially inappropriate behavior, or executive disturbances. This group made up about 14% to 17% of the patients evaluated.
Undisturbed: Roughly half of the group analyzed didn’t show any significant disturbance.
I believe Taylor’s wild behavior can be better explained by frontal lobe syndrome than it can by labeling her with a personality disorder, and can account for why she bounces between those cluster-B disorders instead of fitting neatly into one. Not everything is a personality disorder. The combination of abandonment and emptiness stemming from her childhood, her parents’ divorce, and the assault, along with chronic migraines and whatever caused the face drooping, be it a stroke or mimic, all collided to turn an abandoned girl into a monstrosity of a woman spiraling in the webs of her own lies.
She blamed Shonna for everything and more because she felt abandoned by her, and betrayed by the hysterectomy despite having the tubal litigation done a year prior by her own consent. Morton didn’t question, confront, or betray her, so Taylor opted to side with him. He just went with things.
She shunned and blocked on social media anyone who questioned the validity of her pregnancy despite herself knowing it was all a charade. She even unfriended her own mother on Facebook and let her find out through a third party about the supposed pregnancy. Shonna wasn’t even let into the illusion — likely because Taylor knew Shonna could shatter it all, the way Tommy tried. He and Shonna were the only ones there when Taylor had the hysterectomy done.
She clung to Wade like her life depended on it, and refused to let him go, even when it meant carrying on a pregnancy scam for ten months and making any attempt to bring home a newborn baby just to prove to him and his family she wasn’t lying.
And that was where Reagan and Braxlynn Hancock lost their lives. The mother and daughter who had nothing more to do with the sham than Taylor being an acquaintance. Taylor watched pregnant women come and go from clinics, studying them and taking pictures of their license plates to find their information. Yet, in the end, Taylor settled on the woman she already knew, who would let her closer more easily, who would trust her more easily.
Who, even after her death, Taylor would say no more than Reagan was trying to help her come clean with Wade. Even the woman who killed Reagan wouldn’t publicly say anything bad about her, though it was more out of making herself look innocent than it was remorse.
But frontal lobe syndrome or personality disorder, Taylor knew she didn’t have to kill Reagan. She could have faked a miscarriage once more and been done. But something inside of her just had to prove people wrong. She just had to produce a baby, her ego so bruised and trampled on by people’s valid questions about her pregnancy. Reagan and her unborn daughter died out of a desperate and toxic woman’s need to feed her ego and continue a charade that was over before it began.
Reagan lived a life that was brimming with love, authenticity, passion, and simplicity. Taylor saw it and wanted it. It’s why she didn’t choose a stranger from whom to steal a baby. She wanted Reagan’s life. The nice home, the loving husband, the happy kids. The life Taylor herself could never hold together. The frontal lobe syndrome took that raging envy, that white-hot ego, and dictated how far Taylor was willing to take her yearning for that life, despite being aware the whole time that she didn’t have to.
If Taylor applied half the energy she did to her scams into creating an authentic and fulfilling life, things could have been much different. Instead, she acted like a petulant child who wanted what she couldn’t have, at any cost.
When someone steals the life of another, they aren’t actually going to steal the life they lived and replicate it. It’s gone. Simply gone. A husband lost a beloved wife and child, and a daughter lost her mother and sister in the most horrifying way imaginable. They have had to find some way to carry on in the aftermaths of this unfathomable crime.
Reagan’s sister, Emily Simmons, revealed in her victim impact statement at the sentencing hearing that she is engaged to be married, and instead of Reagan being there as her maid of honor, she will instead carry a picture of her sister down the aisle.
“My only biological sister. You need to understand what you took from me and my family. No more celebrating her birthday. I was barely 19 when I got the call my sister was gone,” Emily said while crying.
“She will never be my maid of honor. If I visit my sister, I have to go to a graveyard and see a headstone. I will never get a text or phone call from her again,” she added.
Jessica Brooks, Reagan’s mother and the first one at the crime scene after the murders, had stern words for Taylor during the sentencing, during which Taylor showed no outward emotions.
“I know you think this all about you. But it’s about Reagan and Braxlynn,” Jessica said. “She (Hancock) was one of the very few people on this Earth who cared about you. Now who cares about you? My baby was alive still fighting for her babies when you tore her open and ripped her baby from her stomach.”
Prosecutor Kelly Crisp left off on the end of a powerful statement:
“The circumstances in which Reagan died are horrible and there is no doubt it was torture. But a mother died fighting for her child. That's how she left the world. A woman who died fighting.”
And upon handing down the sentence of death, Judge John Tidwell ended the entire arduous ordeal with five words:
“Take her to death row.”
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https://www.ksla.com/2022/11/08/psychologist-testifies-after-evaluating-parker-105-hours/
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https://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/2022/nov/09/parker-receives-death-penalty-called-evil-piece/