Tyler Parker: Fetal Abductor
Some women would kill for a baby.
In an excited Facebook post on Aug. 16, 2020, 21-year old Texan Reagan Hancock announced that she was pregnant with her second baby, a girl due Nov. 10. She and her husband, Homer, were going to name the baby Braxlynn Sage.
Meanwhile, a friend of Reagan’s was also excited about her own pregnancy. Tyler Morton, who had photographed Reagan and Homer’s wedding, was also posting pictures of her baby bump on Facebook. She already had two kids, aged 6 and 10, so this was to be her third. She had a gender reveal party that February and said that she was due to have her labor induced on Oct. 9.
But not all of Tyler’s friends were as happy and supportive as she expected. Several of them replied to her posts, asking her why she was faking a pregnancy, since they knew she’d had a hysterectomy.
Tyler dismissed them as “crazy” and said they would all look like fools when she came home from the hospital with a baby.
On the morning of Oct. 9, 2020, Jessica Brooks, Reagan’s mother, went to Reagan’s New Boston, Texas, home to check on her. What she found would shock her to her core.
Inside, the Hancocks’ home looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood was splashed on the floor, the furniture, and the walls. And in the living room, face-down in a large puddle of blood, was Reagan’s lifeless body.
Fighting panic, Jessica called 911 right away. She told the local officers that Reagan was eight months pregnant, so they called an ambulance in the hopes of saving the baby.
When the ambulance arrived, they rolled Reagan onto her back. Immediately they saw a large cut in her abdomen, and were quickly able to determine that her baby was no longer inside her. This was clearly a homicide.
As soon as the information about the crime was released to the wider Texas law enforcement community, a state trooper named Lee Shavers responded that he had had a very strange traffic stop that morning.
Only minutes before Jessica had found Reagan’s body, Shavers had stopped a woman for speeding in DeKalb, Texas, just a few miles away from New Boston.
Shavers said that the driver was a bloody woman, and in her lap was a bloody, still infant. The umbilical cord was still attached to the infant and was coming out of the woman’s pants. The woman — identified as Tyler Renee Parker — said that she had just given birth on the side of the road, but the baby wasn’t breathing.
Shavers immediately began performing CPR on the infant and radioed for an ambulance. The ambulance transported Tyler and the baby to a hospital in nearby Idabel, Oklahoma.
Tragically, EMTs and doctors couldn’t save the baby girl. She was declared dead on arrival.
But there was something far more disturbing going on than the death of an infant. Doctors were quickly able to determine that Tyler did not give birth anytime recently.
That afternoon, after news of the crime was released, Oklahoma law enforcement arrested Tyler at the hospital.
In custody, Tyler — who went by Tyler Morton on Facebook — confessed to killing Reagan and kidnapping Braxlynn. She has been charged with capital murder, first-degree murder, and kidnapping.
Thankfully, this kind of horrific crime, where a pregnant woman is killed and her unborn baby cut out of her womb, is extremely rare. Called “fetal abductions” or “Cesarean kidnappings,” there have been less than 50 known cases worldwide.
The first known fetal abduction case occurred in 1974 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when Winifred Ransom killed Margaret Sweeney and cut out her unborn child with a pocket knife. Ever since, the Sweeney case has served as a kind of gruesome template for every other fetal abduction that has followed.
The perpetrators of these crimes can be very different in terms of race or socioeconomic class, but they share some important traits. They are nearly all mothers, but can no longer have children; Tyler Parker fits that profile perfectly. (Ransom, who was infertile, is the single exception to this rule).
Their personalities are very similar too: usually compulsive, manipulative narcissists, driven to have a baby not because they want a child to love and nurture, but as a means to coerce or manipulate a male partner into staying with them. While we don’t have any information about Tyler yet, it’s likely that this would apply to her, as well. It’s also very likely that she and her boyfriend were having relationship problems just before Tyler “got pregnant.”
Fetal abductors follow a predictable pattern in their M.O.: they begin planning their crimes months in advance, beginning with public pregnancy announcements (even despite previous sterilization or infertility). They may forge pregnancy tests, download other women’s ultrasound images, and otherwise fabricate evidence of a pregnancy. As the months go on, they will intentionally gain weight or pad their clothing so as to appear pregnant.
Again, Tyler followed the pattern to a T.
The perpetrator’s next step is to befriend another pregnant woman who has a due date similar to hers (and whose baby would be a “match” for hers, in terms of complexion or race). In the days before the internet and social media, perpetrators would haunt daycares, schools, parks, and other places mothers might hang out, hoping to find and befriend a victim. In 1974, Ransom met Sweeney at a store, then went out of her way to make friends and bond over their mutual pregnancies.
Apparently Tyler knew Reagan before she began plotting her crime, so in this regard she did deviate slightly from the pattern.
Regardless of how they meet, once the perpetrator has earned her victim’s trust, she lures her victim to a private place to commit the crime, usually with an offer of free baby clothes or supplies. Often this is the perpetrator’s home, but not always. There have been fetal abductions that have occurred in the victim’s home, like with Reagan.
Once the perpetrator has the victim where she wants her, that’s when she commits the unthinkable. The exact method of killing differs; Ransom knocked Sweeney out with a blow to the head, then began cutting her open with a pocket knife. When Sweeney regained consciousness, Ransom struck her at least 20 times with a hatchet before shooting her twice with a .32-caliber revolver.
In Reagan’s case, we still don’t have all the details, but the evidence points to a violent altercation, followed by Tyler cutting Reagan open with a small scalpel. The scalpel was later found buried in Reagan’s neck.
After she removes the baby, the perpetrator will usually hide the victim’s body — sometimes, with help. Ransom’s nephew helped her wrap Sweeney’s body in a sheet, then place it in a plastic bag before burying it beneath Ransom’s kitchen floor.
However, not all fetal abductors hide their victims’ bodies. Like Reagan, there have been a few cases where the victims were murdered in their homes and left there for family members to find.
Finally, the perpetrator has what she wants: a baby to call her own. But the ruse never works for long. In Ransom’s case, she admitted the crime to her boyfriend that evening, but it took him a few days to gather his courage and go to the police.
In Tyler’s case, she was caught within hours of her attack — probably the shortest time from attack to arrest of any fetal abductor.
According to criminal experts, the fact that they never get away with their crimes only underscores the fact that the perpetrators are “clearly delusional.” At trial, Ransom’s psychologist argued that she was driven by a psychotic delusion triggered by her inability to have a baby. Ransom was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was acquitted as insane, but sentenced to an indeterminate term at the Byberry State Hospital. Only 20 months later, the hospital declared her cured, and she was released.
As of this writing, Tyler is facing several felony charges, at least one of which carries the possibility of the death penalty. She is expected to stand trial sometime in 2022.
Fetal abduction cases are rare, but they have been increasing in the last 20 years. Some experts blame it on the increase in hospital security, which makes kidnapping newborns virtually impossible. Manipulative, delusional women may have begun turning to more deadly methods to obtain a baby.
While the risk of falling victim to a fetal kidnapper is virtually zero, it pays to be aware of that risk. Elizabeth Petrucelli, a doula who formerly worked in hospital security, advises pregnant women not to be overly alarmed, but to be educated: “You need to be more careful about who you interact with, who you are alone with.” She warned pregnant women against old friends who had lost touch, or acquaintances you just met, who suddenly become “your best friend” when they find out you are expecting (source: The Guardian). If all pregnant women are cautioned to practice basic internet safety, hopefully we won’t see any more fetal abductions.
