Jessica Brookes 911 call exposes Reagan Simmons-Hancock killing — Daily Star

daily star: Jessica Brookes called 911 after finding her daughter, Reagan Simmons-Hancock, dead at home and told the call handler, “Help me. My daughter's been murdered. Somebody got in her house. She's dead!” The recording preserved the immediate aftermath of a killing that left Simmons-Hancock, who was almost eight months pregnant, with devastating injuries and her baby missing.

Jessica Brookes’ 911 call

Brookes’ call is the clearest account of the moment the discovery was made. Simmons-Hancock had been killed at home, and the post-mortem later found 15 stab wounds, 98 other cuts and around 40 blunt force injuries. Two of the knife wounds perforated her jugular vein, and some of the wounds were deep enough to reach the bone.

The blunt force injuries broke her nose and caused five skull fractures. The post-mortem findings show how quickly the case moved from a missing person-style discovery to a fatal assault investigation, with the emergency call capturing the first report of what Brookes saw inside the house.

Reagan Simmons-Hancock’s injuries

Dr. Melinda Flores carried out the post-mortem examination. Her findings show that Simmons-Hancock was attacked with both a knife and blunt force, and that the violence was severe enough to leave multiple categories of injury on the body. The baby’s body later showed bruising on the scalp and umbilical cord.

Simmons-Hancock’s baby was delivered by a crude improvised caesarian section by the killer and died after being delivered. That detail separates this case from an ordinary homicide file: the violence did not end with Simmons-Hancock’s death, and the missing baby became part of the murder scene itself.

Taylor Parker and Wade Griffin

Taylor Parker became the youngest woman on death row in Texas in the case tied to Simmons-Hancock’s killing. Parker had convinced Wade Griffin and his family that she came from an oil-rich family and was due a sizeable inheritance, bought Griffin’s mother a brand-new car that was later repossessed, and made a $4million cash offer on a ranch in Oklahoma.

Parker also told Griffin she was pregnant with his baby, despite having previously undergone a hysterectomy after an ectopic pregnancy. Her internet search history included “pregnancy silicone belly,” “newborn adoptions,” “how to find a birth mother,” and “video of c-section,” and she faked an ultrasound photo of a baby she called Clancy.

Connie, Griffin’s mother, said Parker’s answers became a pattern: “She always had a counter” and “Everything I presented, she countered it.” Griffin said in the Netflix documentary Maternal Instinct, “I like to take stuff slow, not just start jumping from dating one month to ‘I’m already pregnant.’” Simmons-Hancock had hired Parker to photograph her wedding, which placed Parker close to the victim before the killing.

The immediate question left by the call and the post-mortem is how the case is understood now: Brookes’ recording and Dr. Flores’ findings fix the facts of the killing, while Parker’s deception around Griffin explains the wider path that led to Simmons-Hancock’s death. The documentary title Maternal Instinct ties those threads together for viewers, but the record that matters most is the emergency call that began with a mother finding her daughter dead at home.