‘This is the Hilton’: Taylor Parker’s pleasant life on death row now, as she speaks from jail

After Netflix’s latest true crime documentary Maternal Instinct shocked the world, here’s a look at Taylor Parker’s life now on death row in Texas.

The chilling film follows the true story of the woman who murdered 21-year-old expecting mother Reagen Simmons-Hancock and cut her unborn baby out of her abdomen after faking a pregnancy to her boyfriend and family.

Parker was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death on 9th November 2022 and has since made three appeals to lower her sentence, which have all been denied.

So, as of 2026, Taylor is still on death row, and her life sounds surprisingly pleasant.

Credit: Netflix

Taylor Parker is currently living on death row in Texas

Taylor is now 33 and incarcerated at the Patrick O’Daniel Unit, a prison in Gatesville, Texas that only houses female prisoners. She is one of only seven women on death row in Texas, and the youngest.

In 2025, Taylor was interviewed by a journalist for a piece in The New Yorker about nuns trying to save the women on Texas’s death row, and revealed she is called “the baby”. “They call me the baby. I’m everybody’s kids’ age,” she said.

She has to wear a white prison tunic, but said the prison is luxury compared to the jail she was put in when she was first arrested. “This is the Hilton compared to the county jail,” she said. “I was with inmates who ate faeces and blood.”

Credit: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

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She likes being in prison and doesn’t want to go home

Taylor told the New Yorker she likes being on death row and doesn’t want to go home. “Thinking of the free world brings anxiety and fear of my past,” she said.

“It reminds me of those things that controlled me for so long. It’s the hardest thing to admit, but I do not believe in going home for myself. My place is here. I stand firm on the belief you do not deserve to have something you took from another. That’s part of the acknowledgement and acceptance process on the road to redemption.”

Credit: Netflix

Taylor Parker is still waiting for an execution date

The convicted murderer hasn’t been given an execution date yet, and likely won’t for many years. On average, inmates spend 11 to 18 years on death row before being executed, and she will spend those years working towards “redemption”.

Taylor said that until she went on trial, she didn’t think she’d done anything wrong. “I was in a full-on war in my mind. I told myself, ‘You didn’t do what they said. It’s lies’. My realisation came when I had to face the autopsy photos. Jesus hit me straight on, flesh to flesh. That courtroom was so silent, but I heard his voice loud and clear. He told me to open my eyes and see reality,” she recalled.

It wasn’t until she heard the “words of pain and grief and love” from Reagen’s loved ones in their impact statements that she started her “road to redemption”.

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Featured image credit: Netflix and Texas Department of Criminal Justice