BOWIE COUNTY, Texas (KTAL/KMSS) – In an emotional outburst on the stand Monday, a former jailhouse lover angrily addressed Taylor Parker as she testified about the lies Parker told her surrounding the murder of Reagan Hancock.  

“You lied to me that whole time, Taylor! That whole time!” Lana Addison told Parker. “You got my kids involved!” 

It was the first time in the trial, now in its seventh week, that any of the witnesses have directly addressed Parker. A Bowie County jury convicted the 29-year-old on Oct. 3 of capital murder and kidnapping in the death of Hancock, 21, and her unborn baby girl, Braxlynn Sage, on Oct. 9, 2020. The baby, born 35 weeks pre-term by crude c-section, did not survive. Now, the same jury is hearing testimony in the penalty phase of the trial to determine whether she should get the death penalty. 

Wearing green jail garb, Lana Addison broke out in hives almost immediately on the stand Monday afternoon and told First Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp she was nervous. She confirmed she did not want to be there because of the embarrassment it would cause herself and her family but that she was compelled by the court to testify.  

“It’s taken a toll on all of us.”  

She became emotional during her testimony as she recalled questioning Parker about some of the details in her stories that did not make sense. There was no discernable reaction to Addison’s outburst from Parker, who remained still at the defense table. But her attorney objected to Addison’s testimony as “non-responsive.”  

Addison said she met Parker when she was a trustee at the Bi-State Jail and did not know anything about what Parker was in there for. They became friends and started exchanging notes.

Prosecutors showed a sampling of stacks of notes and letters between Parker and Addison in which Parker told Addison she cared about her and loved her. Those notes also contained detailed information about Parker’s version of the crime and plans to get herself exonerated. Addison testified that she believed it all and felt the same about Parker because she did not know what she was accused of doing when they first met. When she learned more, Addison says she wanted to believe it was not true.   

Addison testified that Parker was soon trying to rope her into her schemes to exonerate herself and frame others for the brutal murder, including fellow inmates. All the while, they were sharing details about their lives with each other.  

“I just took it at face value that what she told me was the truth.”  

Addison said she would later learn that some of the information she shared with Parker would be used to manipulate her and others.  

Parker discussed details of Hancock’s murder, telling her several versions of the story but generally claimed that she was innocent and had been set up. She claimed hearing Hannah Hullender’s voice in a neighboring cell at the jail jogged her memory because it matched the voice that she heard in one of the versions of her story in which she was drugged and taken to Hancock’s house, where gang members attacked Hancock and left her to die. In that version, Parker told Addison that Hancock was bleeding out and begged her to take the baby out to save her because she “felt like her body was dying.”

The version Addison said she heard the most was that she had been at her longtime friend’s house the night before and they planned to meet up again the next morning after Hancock’s husband went to work. She got up early and went to Walmart to fill up with gas when her boyfriend Wade Griffin called her and told her an insurance adjuster was coming to the house and that she needed to go let the dogs out. But on the way home, Parker claimed, she saw a car on the side of the road with its lights flashing and stopped to ask if everyone was okay. Parker told Addison that was the last thing she remembered because she was drugged. She claimed she came to with her face against the window in the back a car with two females and a male. In later versions of the story, Parker claimed it was Wade’s car. Addison says she asked her how she knew what car she was in and Parker told her she recognized the smell of his work clothes. 

Parker claimed she was “in and out” because of the drugging and woke again in a carport or garage, hearing noises before passing out again and coming to in front of the washer and dryer inside Hancock’s home. Parker claimed she heard “a bunch of commotion” and was trying to pull her body up but because she was drugged, her motor skills were not working. Parker told Addison she made it to the kitchen area, where someone was being attacked and someone swung something at her, so she held her hand up and the blow broke her hand.  

She claimed somebody told her to get up and they “whooped” her again. Parker told Addison that when she came to, she was slipping in something and she didn’t know at time where the blood was coming from, herself or Reagan or someone else. But by that time, the gang of attackers was leaving and Parker heard the door close. Parker claimed to Addison that she was freaking out and crying at the sight of her best friend in that condition. According to Addison’s recollection of Parker’s story, she claimed Reagan told her to take the baby, asking her, “‘Could you please help my daughter?’”

Parker claimed she told Reagan she did not know what to do until she remembered she had a scalpel set she had in her car.  

“How did you know your car was there?” Addison recalled asking Parker, who told her that she “took a guess.”  

Parker told Addison she was used to performing c-sections on animals from working on the farm but that she cried to Reagan, telling her she could not do it and did not have the nerve. That was when Parker claimed Reagan “shoved” the scalpel in Parker’s broken hand into her own abdomen and pulled it across.  

While this was happening, Parker claimed, Reagan’s three-year-old daughter came out and Parker yelled at the child to get back in her room. She said the little girl looked shocked and scared and went back in her room and shut the door and Parker never saw her again.  

Parker told Addison the baby’s leg “popped out,” so she grabbed it. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck and the baby was blue. This was when Parker claimed to Addison that she “held the baby up to Reagan with tears streaming down her face, like a hero,” and told her, “‘Look, here’s your baby girl! Look, we did it! Here’s your baby girl,’” and that Reagan smiled before taking one last deep breath.  

Parker told Addison that she tried to do CPR on the baby on the couch, but it was not working so she grabbed the baby and ran out the door.  

“You had no phone?” Addison testified to asking Parker at that point in the story before turning to address Parker directly in the courtroom about all the lies. While Addison did not address Parker directly again during her testimony, she glared angrily at her at times.  

Parker’s explanation for not calling 911 right away to get help for the baby was that she did not know she had her phone until it slipped out from under the seat in the car and hit her feet. That’s when she picked it up and discovered that it was on airplane mode. She told Addison she was driving while trying to get her phone working and holding on to the baby when the Texas DPS trooper pulled her over in DeKalb before she could make the emergency call.  

Parker claims alternate perpetrators are gang members

Parker had names for members of the “gang” that she claimed had drugged and kidnapped her, including Kodiak, J-Dog, Fat Boy, and later, fellow inmate Hannah Hullender. In one version of the story, Parker told Addison that she was in debt to a drug dealer over her Dilaudid habit and that members of the gang overheard her talking about getting $10,000 out of her safe and discussing where she planned to go with it in the morning.  

Parker told Addison that Hullender had confessed to the crime. At the time, Lana believed her.  

“Honestly I did, but I didn’t know any different, and I feel foolish now,” Addison testified. “It was just too much to imagine that one person could orchestrate this much, fool this many people at one time.” 

Like others who have testified before her, Addison described how Parker had her convinced. 

“She’s very convincing. She’s a great liar. She remembers down to every detail. I don’t know how she does it,” Addison explained that Parker was able to keep track of multiple characters, details, and storylines and recall them on the spot. “It was just too much to remember for it to be a lie. It’s quite impressive, but it’s sick.” 

Addison says Parker tried to get her to discredit another fellow inmate who Parker had unsuccessfully tried to recruit into the scheme and gave her a note that she said was a suicide confession from Hullender. She says Parker also told her she was still drugged and traumatized when she gave her statement to police and that her attorney told her they were going to retract it. She also told Addison that police were not doing enough to exonerate her and that the DA’s office was destroying evidence that would free her.  

Parker gave Addison detailed information about the witnesses and evidence she was trying to get to a detective she claimed believed she was innocent and was trying to help her. Parker asked Addison to help deliver that information when she got out. Parker wrote out a master plan, identifying everyone’s roles in the scheme. It included notes to contact an attorney in Arkansas who had represented an inmate who got a life sentence but was released with time served after new evidence came to light. Parker wanted that attorney to look at her case “to see if he thinks the NEW EVIDENCE is enough to release me or take away charges” and to ask him to call her mother if he could “do something better” on her case. 

Parker wanted Addison to be her “top lead witness” and pass on evidence of a plan to kill Parker in jail. She says Parker told her all kinds of stories and provided extensive details, framing herself as a victim who would never kill her friend.   

“I couldn’t, I couldn’t bear to do that. She was my friend, not a steak,” Parker told Addison in one jailhouse letter shown to the jury.  

“I dreamed of Reagan last night. She told me to wake up and fight,” she wrote in another.  

“I wanted to believe her,” Addison testified. “and I was getting out soon, so I wanted to carry them out with me to help her. I did.”  

But Addison says she grew suspicious and started trying to get to the truth with Parker, ultimately alerting authorities at the jail instead of carrying out her part of the plan.

“When I learned what she was actually there for and what was at stake and I had a confession in detail and names floating around, it scared me. So I called my mother and asked to be contacted because I didn’t want that in my hands. True or not true, I didn’t want any part of it.” 

That led to a search of Addison’s cell, where the documents were recovered.  

After Addison left jail, she and Parker continued to write and talk on the phone. Before she left, Parker also gave Addison a paperback copy of Nora Roberts’ Shelter in Place.  Addison says Parker kept asking her if she had read it yet. When she finally did open the book, it appeared to be dedicated to fellow inmate Shonnaree Yeager from Hannah Hullender.  

Parker fabricates jailhouse ‘hit’ plot

Yeager, who testified in the first part of the trial, fell out of Parker’s favor when she refused to copy one of Parker’s faked confession letters and distribute it to the sheriff’s office, Parker’s attorney, and the local newspaper when she got out. 

Addison found pages in the paperback novel bookmarked and with notes on them.  

“It’s the only way you asked me if you would ever do anything. Yes, what I asked you. Leave it between God and me. I want it to be peaceful though. Let her speak to God for her punishment,” read the penciled notes on one page.  

“You thought I was nothing. You were wrong,” said notes on another page. The messages claimed to take responsibility for the kidnapping and beating.  

“She begged, cried, screamed for her friend,” referencing Parker in a version of the story Parker had told Addison about the murders.  

“The world will know my name…and all three kids will be dead at my hands,” read part of another message.  

The notes mentioned the use of cyanide and appeared to suggest a plot to kill Parker in jail. They also appeared to claim responsibility for framing Parker and contained a message to Crisp herself.  

“How does it feel DA Kelly Crisp? You have destroyed a traumatized girl’s life on assumption and lies. We gave you everything…” 

On the stand, Addison said she did not understand what Parker expected her to do with these notes but that she knew Parker wanted her to call her after she read them. Addison says she did not know at the time about the ongoing scheming and manipulations involving other inmates and staff at the jail.  

“She was playing all of us at the same game and we were all playing against each other, and we never even knew it.” 

Addison also testified about a laundry list of other lies she has since discovered Parker told her, including that her son’s father was never in his life and that he was petitioning for custody to take advantage of her being in jail. Parker worried to Addison that the boy would be confused because he did not know his father that well. In reality, Parker’s son has always known his father, Tommy Wacasey, and has been primarily in his custody since the divorce because Parker frequently failed to show up for visitation.  

Parker also called ex-boyfriend Wade Griffin a “dumb***” when Addison asked her how he could not have known she was not pregnant for nine months. Addison said Parker also told her Wade wanted a child but that she had already had a hysterectomy and she did not want to lose him. Later, after Griffin apparently fell out of Parker’s favor, she claimed he was actually involved in the murder and was motivated by money he believed he would come into if she died.   

Parker claimed to multiple inmates she was harassed, abused, and denied food for several days while she was in custody in Oklahoma before she was extradited to Texas.  

Parker also claimed to have congestive heart failure, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and COPD, requiring her to sleep with oxygen overnight. She claimed that the hospital had refused to treat her after she had heart palpitations while behind bars because of who she was and what she was accused of.  

Addison confided in Parker that she had been abused as a child by a family member and that Parker claimed it happened to her, too. She insinuated her father would come into her room drunk at night and force himself on her. Addison said Parker had a habit of co-opting illnesses and traumas suffered by other people and presenting them as her own.  

Addison said Parker also told her and her 14-year-old daughter that she had a $350,000 house that she was going to give to them.  

Prosecutors showed the jury a note from Parker asking Addison to contact a family member of hers who has connections with the “Texas Prison Board” who can help her get to a “good prison.” She told Addison that she was planning to ask the judge at an upcoming pretrial hearing to reinstate her bond under strict guidelines, with house arrest, an ankle monitor, and “sitters at house 24/7 to allow me home until trial.”  

“Could you call around for some high-profiled bondsman willing to work w/cash/collateral? Anything helps if you so want to—or contact fox news or cnn-I’d like to an all piece on my story,” Parker asked Addison, who said that Parker wanted to give interviews and tell her side of the story so that she would get some money. She also claimed that Netflix wanted to do a series after the trial was over and that she was going to get paid.  

Addison said Parker told her there were numerous cameras in her face coming to and from court but she was not complaining.  

“Almost like a celebrity type or kind of bragging.”  

Through it all, Addison said Parker never expressed remorse or took direct responsibility for killing Reagan Hancock, but at one point said it was her lies that got her friend killed.  

“My money lie got my friend killed and no matter what I’ll wear the scar on my heart forever,” Parker told Addison in one letter. “I don’t want to be a hero because I wasn’t that day. Reagan refused to show those SOBs any weakness,” Parker wrote. “As I begged pleaded cried screamed. She told me to say nothing. I will never unsee the worst day of my life.” 

Addison grew emotional again on the stand while talking about her children and how Parker would criticize her parenting skills.

“She made me feel like the worst mother on Earth because she was the best mother on Earth. Everything she did was perfect, and no one could live up to that,” Addison said. “My children are my life.”

On cross-examination, Parker’s defense attorney Jeff Harrelson homed in on that statement after a contentious exchange over Addison’s claim that she has a photographic memory in which Harrelson asked her whether she only “perceived” herself to have a photographic memory.

Moving on to Addison’s testimony regarding her children, Harrelson posed his next question similarly.

“You perceive that these children are your life,” Harrelson said, drawing an objection from the State.

“You love your children,” Harrelson asked after returning from a brief conference with the prosecutors and the judge at the bench.

“Yes,” Addison replied.

“You made decisions to absent yourself from your children,” Harrelson asserted.

“I’m not on trial,” Addison responded.

Harrelson reminded Addison that he asks the questions of witnesses on the stand and continued, reminding Addison that she did things that landed her back in jail and recalling her earlier testimony that she was not offered a deal in exchange for her testimony but that she would not turn it down if it were offered.

Following that testy exchange, Crisp returned briefly to ask Addison a few more questions.

“Lana, you haven’t killed two people.”

“No, I have not.”

“You have not done something that would subject you to the death penalty,” Crisp continued, drawing an objection from the defense.

Former inmate says Parker asked her to find fake witnesses

Earlier Monday, Parker’s first ex-husband Tommy Wacasey was called back to the stand for the third time since the trial began and confirmed Parker used to practice other people’s handwriting and signatures “all the time” and had her mother and grandmother’s signatures down. Wacasey also confirmed Parker’s handwriting on numerous documents in a process that took more than 20 minutes before he left the stand, calling out specific letters he recognized as hers.  

“That’s your lay opinion that’s her handwriting,” defense attorney Jeff Harrelson noted on cross-examination, asking him if he is an expert.

“No, but when you’re married to someone as long as I was, you recognize their handwriting.”

Those documents were entered into evidence and would be called up as jurors heard from Addison and other current and former Bi-State jail inmates who testified that Parker asked them to help her by passing notes, distributing “confession letters” outside the jail, planting evidence and finding witnesses willing to testify to seeing Parker elsewhere at the time of the crimes. 

In exchange, Parker was generous in sharing her relatively plentiful commissary and promised thousands of dollars in payment and help with their legal cases, claiming she was wealthy and related to the Morton Salt company family.  

One of those inmates, Phyllis Dawson, testified that Parker befriended her and offered her $5,000 to find witnesses who would testify to very specific details. Parker, who called Dawson “Granny,” gave Dawson detailed instructions; written in the pages of a puzzle book she wanted Dawson to take with her when she was released. 

“Granny – This book is for you to keep and take home with you from me. DO NOT LEAVE it! I had a visitation yesterday and I did as you asked regarding the court and you going home. I was clear for them to aid in any way possible. I wish you were still working. I miss you. LOOK ON PG 165 – It’s my favorite game! LOVE YOU!” 

“She wanted to find four people – Black people, not white, and she wanted them to say she was not there,” Dawson testified about her understanding of the notes written in the pages of the puzzle book.  

“They was at the casino and they went to play dominoes at a friend house and stayed there all night long. After they came out there, they seen her and that’s why she could not be at the spot” that the murder happened. 

Prosecutors showed those notes to the jury.  

“I need you to get help from someone you can trust when you get back home,” Parker wrote to Dawson in the puzzle book. 

“When things hit the news and paper the people will need to go to the detectives and say I was driving home the morning of Oct. 9 and saw a few vehicles on the side of the road I didn’t think anything of it but seeing the paper and news I need to tell someone what I saw…” 

The instructions continued in specific detail about what the witness should say about going to the casino in Idabel and staying up at a friend’s house all night playing dominoes along with the route the witness would claim to have taken back home, where Parker wanted them to claim to have seen a flashing light and pulling up to a black Toyota and a silver car to see if they needed help.  

It would describe “a white boy and a black girl with braids, one side of her braids had blond and white together,” and that they “were holding up a white girl passed out. The black girl said no they had been partying and their friend got sick and passed out. They were putting her in the passenger side. The black girl walked over by a hispanic looking girl who didn’t say anything she (hispanic girl) had a shaved line in her eyebrow, pearced [sic] lip).” 

“This will be the eyewitness we need…say they were pulled over on Hwy 8 before you get to Old Boston. The passed out white girl will be me.” The word “me” was underlined four times in Parker’s handwritten notes. “Keep this letter safe and don’t let anyone read it.” 

“It won’t be safe for me to mail once the letter hits,” Parker continued. “Be smart Granny! Pick someone smart who will bring the details to life. Once it’s done and Detective Chris says I will mail you $500.” 

Parker had been claiming to Dawson and others to be getting help from “DC,” or Detective Chris, who she claimed believed she was innocent. As prosecutors made clear Monday, Detective Chris does not exist.  

Shortly before Dawson’s release, Parker wrote Dawson another note.  

I have a package for you. I love you and I trust you. DC even assured me in my letter you were someone they trusted fully during Willy Hughes case. But I need your word. Once you leave here we won’t have communication. So I’m going to write to go over the things I asked DC about the “eye witness part.” He said that could swing either way. If you had the eye witness come into Bi-State first to discuss what they saw. He said to wait a few days before releasing the letters. I told him I think I want you to release the letters first!! So make 3 copies – remember to wear gloves. No hands or skin contact place each in the manila envelopes. Close regular. Do not lick closed!! Put the address on and take to the post office. Put them in a plastic bag when you take them so nothing gets on them. Watch the news and listen. Give it a week or two!! Be thinking who you want to use for the eye witness more than one so a group of girlfriends of yours or make friends. We have to have eyewitness per DC! 

Taylor Parker letter to fellow inmate and trustee, Phyllis “Granny” Dawson

In another follow-up note, Parker wrote to Dawson about the “two big parts” of the plan that Dawson was “in charge of.”  

“DC told me he was proud of me because I told him how amazing it would look, someone in the black community coming forward to the Bi-State, an eyewitness to help a white female.”  

Several in the courtroom, including some on the jury, laughed and scoffed at this part of the note as Dawson read it out loud. 

“I told him love right there. I‘m thinking about that first drink once I get out but I know that $5,000 will hep you! Just make sure to practise the eyewitness part a lot. Also add to the 165 at the end. – I can describe what the girl was wearing a black jacket with some design with it. Grey/white top, black pants. I even noticed a shoe – white sandal on the road beside the driver door.” Parker drew an arrow pointing to this underlined part of the note, “This is describing what I was wearing.”

Parker finished the note off with, “I love you Granny!” 

Dawson said Parker also offered her $15,000 to take an envelope out of the jail and get copies of the letter sealed inside to the local newspaper. 

“I didn’t read it,” Dawson said. “I wasn’t for me.” 

Prosecutors say the envelope contained a 10-page confession letter written by Parker, containing details of the murder that Parker intended to use to frame Hannah Hullender.  

Dawson said she never did what Parker asked of her.  

“Because it didn’t make sense why come I was doin’ all this. And I was hearing all this…and I was praying, asking the Lord, ‘What should I do?’”  

Dawson testified that she never got an answer to those prayers until a Texas DPS agent came to her house asking her if she had any notes or letters from Parker.  

“He grand-rushed me!” the 65-year-old said earnestly on the stand, which led to some chuckles in the courtroom. 

“I told him I didn’t have nothin,’” Dawson added, drawing more chuckles from the gallery and the jury box.  

But then, Dawson testified, the agent told her she could be charged with accessory after the fact to murder if they searched the house and found any documents that proved she was holding out on them. 

“And I said there it is! There it is!” Dawson continued as the courtroom briefly broke out in laughter, “Everything!” 

Inmates detail fake confession letters, frame plot

Shonnaree Yeager took the stand again Monday for the second time in the trial, testifying that Parker also offered her $5,000 to copy a 14-page confession letter and distribute it to the local paper, the Bowie County Sheriff’s Office, and Parker’s attorney Jeff Harrelson after she got out of jail.  

Yeager said Parker handed her a sealed envelope, claiming she did not know who wrote it and that she had not read it. The letter contained a very detailed and elaborate account of the crime.

“She was asleep in a back bedroom, and some sort of altercation went on in the front and when she came out something had happened with some people and Reagan had been attacked,” Yeager recalled of the letter. “She had been beat and hurt and Reagan had asked her to save the baby.”  

Yeager said that according to the letter, Parker got a steak knife from the kitchen, but when that did not work very well, she went to the car to get a kit she used for the hogs and finished removing the baby from Reagan Hancock’s beaten body. Yeager said the letter did not specify exactly how the baby was removed but that Parker put the baby in the car and headed for the hospital until she noticed at some point that the baby was not breathing and pulled over. 

At this point in Yeager’s testimony, Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards asked Yeager to refresh the jurors’ memories about her testimony earlier in the trial that Parker told her that she put the baby up to Reagan’s cheek and told her to “Tell momma bye.”   

Yeager said the purported confession letter Parker gave to her was written from the perspective of one of the alleged perpetrators described in the letter, not Taylor Parker.  

Prosecutors showed a note Parker had written to Yeager with instructions on what to do with the letter, handwritten on a small slip of white paper in pink ink. 

“Shonna,  

Remember make copies and destroy the original! Just make sure a copy gets to Jeff Harrelson. If I helps me. Put them in manilla envelopes!“ 

Yeager said Parker wanted her to pass the letter to yet another trustee, Sylvia Plunkett, for her to open, read, and rewrite in her own hand. It was sealed in a free envelope the jail gives inmates, but Yeager said Parker told her it came smuggled into the jail from the detective who was trying to help her. Yeager also recognized the handwriting as being Phyllis Dawson’s from helping her fill out forms.  

Yeager said Parker never asked to read the letter herself but asked her what was in it.  

“I told her there were specifics of the crime and that it was hard to read.”  

Because the letter contained such specific details about the crime that no one else could know and because Parker’s instructions seemed to be intended to establish that the handwriting in them was not hers, Yeager alerted authorities instead of carrying out Parker’s bidding. 

“I feel Taylor will try and claim insanity but to me this showed the level of manipulation she is willing to go through. She is constantly trying to put trustees into her schemes,” she wrote in her note alerting authorities to the plot. She also testified that it occurred to her that she, too, could be a target of Parker’s framing scheme.  

Yeager says Parker was angry when she found out later that Yeager had not done what she had asked. As Lana Addison testified on Monday afternoon, Parker began a campaign to discredit Yeager and implicate her in a fabricated plot to have Parker killed in jail.  

Prosecutors did not show the fabricated confession letters in court Monday, but they did have an expert in latent fingerprints testify to the lab results showing Parker’s prints – and only Parker’s prints – were all over the 10-page version of the confession letter recovered from Phyllis Dawson’s home. 

Prosecutors also showed several notes and letters Parker had given to Yeager to pass on to other inmates.  

“I get mixed emotions a lot lately – sad, happy, frustration and anger. It’s so up and down really,” Parker wrote to trustee Sylvia Plunkett, who she calls “Mama Sylvia.”  

“I’ve always been a happy person. Smiling, laughing and now I feel like someone I’m not. I know I’ve been told a million times don’t discuss crime but I feel safe with you for one. Two I didn’t do that Sylvia. I know I didn’t. God on my heart – I swear it to you! I know what they are saying on the outside which are mixed version of people’s lies and truths.”  

But Parker went on to tell Sylvia that the truth was going to come out.  

“I begged God to forgive me because everyone, police, etc. convensed [sic] me I just lost it and killed my friend. My sister of 4 years. I asked her to forgive me, that I was sorry – I cried myself to sleep to awake with her in front of me – crying. She told me to stop crying. I told her I was sorry. You know what she said? You should only be sorry if you think you didn’t do this to me. Now wake up and remember. My eyes flew open. I’ve thought and prayed and it’s all not there. I need to remember what happened on my way home. I know the truth is there. I just know it Sylvia. But how can you know something you can’t remember? I’m lost, I’m scared.” 

“What was the truth Taylor Parker wanted to come out?” Richards asked Yeager on the stand. 

“I don’t what her truth was other than she was saying she didn’t do it at that point,” Yeager testified. “The truth kind of changed and evolved. One was that she didn’t do it, one was that she did and was trying to save the baby.” 

Yet another inmate testified Monday that Parker offered to pay her to plant evidence to frame Hullender for Reagan’s murder and to plant a suicide note forged by Parker in Hullender’s cell.  

Inmate claims Parker asked her to plant evidence

Kaleigh Bromsey spent about three weeks in the segregated pod with Parker in January 2021 after getting into a fight with another inmate. Parker quickly moved to calm Bromsey down after the fight and befriended her. After Bromsey asked to borrow some coloring materials to pass the time, Parker asked her if she was willing to “help her with something.” 

Bromsey testified that Parker wanted her to provide information about other people being involved. Parker wanted her to say that she knew of a gang member by name of JDogg who had put a hit out on her and that Hullender was also connected with this gang. Parker somehow knew that Bromsey has a cousin who is a Crip and who is on death row in Oklahoma. Bromsey believes Parker wanted her to use that connection to lend credibility to the story. 

She said Parker wanted Bromsey to team up with her attorney when she was released to get the story straight on how Parker was framed for a hit and that Parker and her friend Reagan were pulled over on the side of the road to give Hannah a ride and “got hit with horse tranquilizers” before they were taken to Hancock’s house, where they were both beaten severely, and her friend asked her to give her a c-section because she was bleeding to death. 

For this, Parker promised to pay Bromsey $5,000 through her mother and her attorney and told her they discuss additional payments after the job was done.  

Bromsey said she heard Hullender, the target of Parker’s attempted frame job, was “just sitting out a few days in jail and was scared to be there” and that she was on suicide watch, mentally scared, and not doing very well. She said she sometimes heard her crying in the jail cell they shared. 

Bromsey said Parker spent her recreational time practicing writing without leaving fingerprints and once demonstrated how she did it. She also allegedly practiced getting Hullender’s handwriting perfect on the forged suicide note. In pink gel ink, it said that as a mother, Hullender did not know how she killed another mother and that she could not live with herself.  

“Along the lines of, ‘If I don’t make it out of jail, tell Momma I love her,” Bromsey said. “Basically, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’” 

She was supposed to say she slept on the floor and looked up and found the note under the table and turn it in. Instead, Bromsey turned the note over to the officers in a notepad, along with a series of other notes Parker wanted her to re-fabricate in her own handwriting. 

On the stand, prosecutors also showed Bromsey a letter that she testified she did not write or sign. 

In addition to planting the suicide note, Bromsey testified that Parker wanted her to “find” evidence on the side of the road in a specific location, drawing her a map and passing a notebook to her with instructions. She had a guard pass her a notebook with these instructions along with a few strands of her hair wrapped in plastic to plant in a beanie Parker wanted her to pick up. She told Bromsey to find Chase Carter to help and told her to call police after the evidence was planted or leave it for someone else to find later.  

Chase Carter is referenced in court documents as an acquaintance Parker believed to be a member of a motorcycle gang. Prosecutors say she allegedly contacted Carter in September 2020 asking for help with a “problem” with a family member that she needed to be kept confidential. In that instance, prosecutors say, Taylor wanted Carter to find someone she could pay $1,500 to take care of the problem. Carter texted Parker, “hell for 1500 I may do it lol,” to which Parker responded, “you won’t do this Chase.” 

The map and instructions were handed to the guards and Bromsey says it all got thrown away. 

Parker also wanted Bromsey to report hearing Parker screaming at night but testified that Parker was actually sleeping just fine.  

During their brief time together in the segregated pod, Bromsey says Parker found out information about her family and her history and used it to manipulate her into thinking her grandmother was cutting off communication with her and seeking to press charges, keeping Bromsey feeling isolated.  

Bromsey says she did not know of the other inmates involved in the framing plot.  

“I just knew my part. She told me that nobody else would help her.” 

She says Parker told her not to talk to anybody, “because she couldn’t trust anybody or that they were going to do what they were supposed to do.”  

Knowing what she knows now, Bromsey said she has found a way to describe Parker’s ability to manage the complicated plots and schemes. 

“She’s playing chess and she’s using a lot of pawns.”  

As Parker’s demands became more suspicious, Bromsey testified that she grew afraid and asked to be moved away from her. She described how she had to hold up a note for the guard to read the request because Parker was always right there listening. 

She said she wanted to be moved because Parker strikes her as “psychotic” and like someone who would stand over the body and say, “look what you made me do.”  

Bromsey said she told investigators what she knew because her conscience would not allow her to withhold the information, especially because she was shot in broad daylight when she was pregnant with her now three-year-old daughter and the bullet barely missed her baby.  

Plus, as a survivor of sexual assault, Bromley said she recognized what it felt like to be groomed. On the stand, she explained how a man let her keep a horse on his property when she was 16 and helped her buy another horse. He helped her care for both of them and made it seem like he was her friend. She wanted to be a barrel racer and he made her believe he was going to help her make all of her dreams come true, only to take advantage of her when she was vulnerable, and he had gained her trust.

“…and Parker strikes me as that type of person,” Bromsey said on the stand.  

“I felt as if that’s what she was doing, she was making it seem like she needed my help as a friend to prove her innocence.”