NEW BOSTON, Texas (KTAL/KMSS) – The mother of the East Texas woman convicted last month of murdering a young pregnant mother and cutting her unborn baby from the womb testified Tuesday that she knew her daughter was not pregnant but did not confront her about it. 

“Not much you can do about a fake pregnancy,” Shonna Prior told Taylor Parker’s defense attorney, Jeff Harrelson. “She knew she wasn’t pregnant. We knew she wasn’t pregnant. There was no need to come up with a plan. We figured the lie would be exposed. He would figure it out.” 

A Bowie County jury convicted the 29-year-old on Oct. 3 of capital murder and kidnapping in the brutal slaying of 21-year-old New Boston mother Reagan Hancock and the kidnapping of her unborn baby, Braxlynn Sage. Prosecutors say Parker did it to keep her boyfriend, Wade Griffin, from leaving her.  

Now, the State is seeking the death penalty, and Parker’s defense team is hoping to convince the jury that Parker should get life in prison.  

Prior was the first witness called to the stand in Parker’s defense on Monday after the state rested its case. She resumed her testimony Tuesday morning, telling the jury that Taylor loves her kids and that she was a good mother while Harrelson showed the jury more than a dozen happy family photos of Taylor and her children. 

“You know these kids,” Harrelson asked Prior. “How do they feel about their mom?”   

“They love her.”   

Harrelson also played several jail calls between Taylor and her children, during which she spoke sweetly to her daughter and advised her to get a good night’s rest before a test. Prosecutors would return to play and question more of Taylor’s calls with her daughter later during cross-examination.  

During questioning from Harrelson, Prior downplayed questions about her daughter’s love of murder mysteries, calling her reading preferences more along the lines of “romantic fantasy” and “Harry Potter for adults” than the “very dark books” with deviant themes described in previous testimony about the kinds of novels investigators found in her jail cell.  

Prior also claimed the judge in her daughter’s divorce never actually ordered Taylor to pay child support and instead only suggested they open a special savings account and set money aside for their son’s college education.  

“Taylor gave us several hundreds of dollars to put in it when she could,” Prior testified on Tuesday.  “She was not required. Her wages were not garnished. She was not required to give it to Tommy. The judge did not set those parameters in the courtroom that day. That’s exactly what he said.” 

Tommy Wacasey and his attorney testified previously that Taylor was ordered to pay child support, even though Tommy did not want to go after her for it. Wacasey said Taylor never paid a dime in child support. Documents presented during that testimony showed she owed $8469.08 in back child support and penalties as of January 2021.   

Prior said she did not learn her daughter was claiming to be pregnant until she got a text from a friend in March 2019 with a screenshot of a Facebook post from Taylor‘s gender reveal party, to which Prior said she had not been invited. Her friend was congratulating her on becoming a grandmother again. 

By then, Prior said, they were not talking much, and Taylor had unfriended her on Facebook after she started dating Wade Griffin.   

“She just became a different person when she got with him.” 

She testified that she texted the congratulatory screenshot to her daughter. 

“So I sent it to Taylor and said, ‘What am I supposed to tell my girlfriends telling me I’m gonna be a grandmother again?”  

“You are,” she says Taylor responded.  

Prior was there when Taylor had her hysterectomy and knew she could not be pregnant. In fact, she says she was the one who made the decision to allow the doctors to go ahead with Taylor’s emergency hysterectomy. But Prior said she never replied to Taylor’s text, and they never discussed it again. 

“Why not?” Harrelson asked.  

“Because she knew that I knew that I wasn’t going to be a grandma again. 

Taylor’s father, Mark Morton, did go to the gender reveal, even though Prior says he also knew she could not be pregnant. Asked why she thought Morton went anyway, Prior said her ex “does not always tell the truth.” 

Prior testified that she also told Taylor’s children that it was not possible for their mother to be pregnant because “she did not have the parts that were required for pregnancy.” 

She never confronted her daughter directly, but Prior said she did have a conversation with Wade’s mother, Connie Griffin, a few days before the murder.  

“She was calling to confirm with me whether it was possible she could be pregnant or not.”

“What was your response?” Harrelson asked Prior on the stand.  

“No, it’s not possible.”  

Prior said work kept her out of town for most of 2020, but she would come home on the weekends. Even then, she says she did not see her daughter much except to pick up the kids when Taylor had visitation time with them. She said Taylor was always in a rush and they never talked much during these exchanges. But, she testified, Taylor never looked pregnant when she did see her after the gender reveal.  

“Is there a reason you didn’t say anything to her?” Harrelson asked.  

“I didn’t feel like there was a reason that I should say, ‘You’re not pregnant’ to her.” 

Harrelson asked whether Prior avoided that discussion out of fear Taylor would keep the kids from her.  

“No, when I wanted to see the kids, she let me see the kids. She was always accommodating when I wanted the kids.”  

“I’ve told you for two years this conversation was coming,” First Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp told Prior during cross-examination.  

“Why didn’t you have a conversation with Taylor?” Crisp asked.  

“Hindsight’s 20/20. I can’t tell you what would have happened if we had done that. We figured the lie was going to be exposed, there were so many people who knew it was a lie and just kept on buying it. I’m not shifting the blame, I just figured he would figure it out. His mother was aware of it, his brother was aware of it. It’s like everyone around them was aware of it. We did not feel the need to call them up.”  

“You know there was nothing you could say that was going to change her course,” Crisp said before reminding Prior on her previous testimony to a Bowie County grand jury that she was afraid to confront her daughter about the faked pregnancy.  

“’If I would have confronted her in person, I feared that she would keep my grandkids from me,’” Crisp quoted from Prior’s November 2020 testimony, nearly a month after Parker’s arrest.  

“I didn’t. I didn’t fear that she’d keep my grandkids from me,” Prior said on the stand Tuesday. 

“Why did you say it?” 

“Maybe that’s what I thought you wanted me to say,” Prior responded. “I just could have had a different opinion then.”  

“Well, this opinion is shared by your sister, by Doni Wacasey, and several other people in the case. ‘If I had confronted her, she wouldn’t have let me see the kids.’ What changed between 2020 and today?” 

“I don’t know,” Prior said. “I understand why the Wacaseys said it. But today I don’t feel that she would have ever kept them from me. Apparently, in November 2020, I felt differently.” 

While she acknowledged that her daughter has a long history of lying, Prior also pushed back when Crisp asked her why she still believes her daughter’s medical claims even after doctors found no evidence there was a medical reason for her symptoms. 

Crisp showed Prior notes from at least three different medical providers that indicate Taylor was exaggerating and possibly even faking her symptoms, including records from a two-week hospital stay in late 2015. 

“It says there’s ‘elaboration.’ Do you know what that means?  

“No, do YOU know what that means?” Prior responded on the stand.   

“That she’s exaggerating her symptoms,” Crisp explained, pointing to a note indicating that medical staff at the hospital discussed with her the possibility that stress was causing her to exaggerate her symptoms. “Do you remember that conversation?” 

“So, yeah that the stress would aggravate the symptoms,” Prior said.   

But Crisp persisted, showing Prior where the medical staff made note of inconsistencies in Taylor’s symptoms after seeing her use her arm normally when using the toilet in spite of claiming of weakness on that side of her body.  

“Then why did they keep her for two weeks!?” Prior responded. “I just don’t understand. The neurologist kept her for two weeks. Why didn’t they just dismiss her?”  

Crisp said it happened just as the hospital was about to discharge Taylor the next day. 

“All the sudden things get worse, and they go downhill. Do you remember that?” Crisp asked. “All the sudden, the bottom falls out.” 

“No, I don’t.” 

TRMC neurologist Dr. Saud Khan diagnosed Taylor with right hemiparesis, which is a migraine on the right side of the brain, and discharged her with a referral to a specialist in Dallas because of a possible spot in her eye that might indicate future development of MS. Khan testified that he did not believe that was what it was, but he wanted the specialist to make sure.  

Crisp pointed to notes from a later hospital visit in which Taylor was once again claiming to have multiple sclerosis even after a neurologist had told them she did not have, reminding Prior that she was the one that told the doctors her daughter had not been diagnosed with the potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord. The records from that visit included a note about that conversation, along with the fact that “this news was not met with enthusiasm” by Taylor. 

“That is a correct statement,” Prior said. “We were told that she didn’t have it. Now, I also told you that Dr. Khan was the one – I mean, he referred us to an MS specialist. And if he didn’t see a need for that, why did he do it?” 

“According to the doctor, it was because your daughter kept reporting symptoms,” Crisp said.  

“She hung on. He thought it was possible,” Prior said after pausing for a moment before explaining that the doctor had told them Taylor might have had one of two early indicators of MS. “She didn’t have one, but she had the other. But we talked about a possible manifestation. Sometimes it shows up later. She did, she held on to that idea because it provided us with something.” 

That’s when Prior says Taylor “got the psychological conversion” diagnosis, which is a mental condition in which people feel symptoms that cannot be confirmed with medical testing, although she said her daughter has never sought psychological treatment. 

“So, I think she held on to the idea that she had MS, okay?”    

Crisp asked Prior if she ever entertained the possibility that her daughter faked these symptoms so that she would not have to work. Prior said Taylor had a very good work ethic and that she wanted to work, claiming the doctor took away her ability to drive because of her vision issues.  

“You and I are gonna have to agree to disagree,” Crisp responded, after which Prior conceded Taylor has never been diagnosed with a stroke.  

“But she’s telling these doctors she’s had a stroke,” Crisp said.  

 “They were stroke-like symptoms. They could see the drooping of her face,” Prior said. “I understand, but something deprived her brain of oxygen, whether it was a blood clot or whatever.” 

Crisp went on to note that Taylor has continued to lie about her medical issues and treatment since she has been in jail, claiming a doctor at that same hospital denied her treatment because of her criminal charges.  

“The testing was complete, and a workup found nothing wrong with her. But she told you this outrageous story. So, when she tells you things like that, what do you think about that?” 

“So yeah, that information upset me,” Prior acknowledged.  

“She’s playing the victim, upsetting you, because you’re concerned about her well-being,” Crisp said, “but she’s lying to you. Fair to say Taylor has history of lying?” 

“Fair,” Prior said.  

“You don’t really hold her to that same standard when it comes to medical issues,” Crisp observed.  

“I lived it also. I’m living side by side with her, by her hospital bed, listening to the doctor when they come in,” Prior said. “I believed that was possible. I could see where that was possible. In the real world, it would happen. I didn’t believe that she was lying.”    

“She is just detailing this whole false 100% fabricated story and you’re completely taken aback and upset on her behalf. The records don’t necessarily match up with those claims,” Crisp countered. 

“The symptoms are real, whether the diagnosis says they are or not,” Prior insisted. “The symptoms that I observed were there.”   

And yet, Prior admitted, she has never heard her daughter have any trouble talking or remembering anything over the past two years she has been in jail and does not appear to be having trouble with those stroke-like symptoms anymore.  

“The only reason we are here and having a punishment trial is because of Taylor Parker,” Crisp replied, apparently in response to Prior’s defensive tone during some of her testimony. “I think we are all responsible for our own actions. I am not making you out to be a bad guy.” 

Crisp also reminded Prior that she testified during the November 2020 grand jury hearing that she was unaware that Taylor had voluntarily undergone a tubal ligation more than a year before her mother gave doctors the go-ahead to perform an emergency hysterectomy but she still blamed her mother for her inability to have children. 

“I believe today she was playing the victim. She blamed me for years.’” Do you remember saying that?”  

“That she blamed me for the hysterectomy? Yes, for the decision. Well, I made the decision, she took it out on Tommy. She didn’t blame me to my face.”   

“Until Nov. 5, 2020, you lived with that. Until that point, she let you believe that, even though she had tubal ligation in 2014. I mean, does that sound like a manipulation to you?” 

“I don’t believe I was being manipulated. But that was in the past. I didn’t carry on with that.” 

But Prior did express anger and frustration while on the stand with speculation on social media about her role and responsibility in her daughter’s crimes and schemes.  

“There’s been a lot of stuff put out there about me,” Prior said, pointing in particular to the Notice of Extraneous Offenses the State was required to provide to the defense about evidence and testimony they planned to present during the trial. 

“It’s not true,” Prior said of the speculation it fueled, adding that her priority is protecting her granddaughter, of whom she now has custody. 

Crisp said the state was required to file that notice and the documents are public information. 

“There’s no way around it.” 

“I understand. “ 

“The state has to lay out the evidence “ 

“Yes, but you understand what it implied toward me.” Prior said. “That’s not your responsibility what people will speculate.” 

“You can’t help that, I can’t help that either,” Crisp agreed. “You understand that decision was your daughter’s?”  

“I understand that,” Prior acknowledged.  

“Do you remember telling her, ‘If you had been thinking about your kids, you wouldn’t be where you are now.’” 

Shonna Prior indicated that she did. 

“That little girl was not enough for her,” Crisp said.  

“Apparently not,” Prior replied. 

That exchange came after Crisp played a jail call between Taylor and her daughter and questioned why she told the crying 12-year-old that she could not talk with anyone about anything to do with her mother being in jail. 

“You explained to me that you didn’t think (Taylor’s daughter) knew about the crime,” Crisp asked Prior. 

“She does not know the horrific details,” Prior said. “She knows that two people have died at the hands of her mother.”  

“She’s wanting to talk to her friend,” Crisp said, and her mother was telling her she could not, even though she should not have known enough to harm to her mother’s case. “That’s hard to wrap your mind around.” 

Prior claimed Taylor was upset and wanting to talk about an incident earlier in the day involving a dispute with Tommy Wacasey’s parents during a custody exchange.  

“Didn’t seem to me to be something you would instruct the child not to talk about the custody battle between her grandparents,” Crisp pushed back. 

“No, it’s not a custody battle,” Prior responded. “There is no custody battle. I can’t tell you what Taylor was referring to. The beginning of that call was the Wacasey incident. That’s what (Taylor’s daughter) was upset about.” 

Still, Prior resolved on the stand to take the child back to counseling and testified that she had told her daughter she needed to “get it together” when she talked to her daughter because it upset the child when her mother was upset.  

Crisp pointed out that in at least one call, Taylor to her daughter about the reason she was unable to call the previous day because records show she actually spent her phone time talking to her girlfriend, instead. 

Crisp asked Prior about the hit Taylor told Wade and others that her mother had put out on her. Prior testified that Tommy Wacasey’s mother, Doni Wacasey, called her about a month before the murders to tell her that Taylor had contacted her looking for someone to kill her mother. Doni was waiting on Taylor to text her from one of the fake numbers she had been using and she was going to turn her in to the authorities, but she never got the evidence she needed.  

Testimony earlier in the trial revealed that Taylor had also reached out to her friend Chase Carter to explore the possibility of hiring a hitman, but nothing ever came of it. 

“Why would Taylor put a hit out on you?” 

“Well, um, I didn’t do anything to deserve a hit out on me,” Prior said. 

“So no fight, out of the blue, ‘I need to put a hit out.’ There’s no triggering event. That’s my question,” Crisp said. 

Shonna Prior did not have an answer. But during her testimony for the defense, she made clear that she was not behind the threats and harassment campaign that Wade believed were real and coming from a persona prosecutors have come to refer to as “Mandy Body,” AKA “Fake Shona.” 

“So, if someone was sending messages pretending to be you, was it you?”  

“No.”  

“Did you hire some Mexican mafia hit squad to kill Taylor?” 

“I did not.”  

“Did you get arrested after a shootout with police?” 

“No. I did not.”   

Harrelson rounded out this line of questions with one the jurors seemed to find particularly amusing. 

“Did you commit suicide in jail?” 

“I did not.” 

On cross-examination, Crisp also asked Prior whether she ever said she would call the FBI if her daughter actually came up with a baby. 

“If she came up with a baby, that’s when we would have done something,” Prior confirmed.  

“You said, ‘I never thought she would follow through on it,’” Crisp said. “The reality is, she’s been telling lies for a very long time. 

“That’s reality,” Prior agreed. 

“Throughout the entire trial, the blame has been shifted on other people,” Crisp continued. “I don’t have any information that anyone in your family knew that she was gonna follow through and kill Reagan or kill Reagan’s baby.” 

“Of course not.” 

“So, the blame lies with Taylor for the crime.” 

“Yes” 

“She knows right from wrong. You raised her to know right from wrong.” 

“Exactly.” 

“She bears responsibility, no one else. Wade included, is that right?” 

“I don’t know,” Prior said.  

“You’re saying he has a role?” 

“I don’t know the dynamics of the relationship but I believe she’s responsible for her actions. I don’t know what actions he had.”  

Prior testified to how she learned about the murder and her daughter’s involvement in it that morning when her sister called her and told her and her husband about “the initial event.” Prior believes her sister Molly heard it from the women’s clinic, which was directly above the pharmacy where she worked at Titus Regional Medical Center. 

“I think it was a couple of hours later, I received another call. Matter of fact, I think I was on the phone with Wade’s mother when Molly beeped in and said, “It was her, it was Taylor.”  

Prior says “after the initial shock,” she and her husband immediately went to pick Taylor’s daughter up from the Wacaseys, where she had been staying that weekend. They called a friend who worked in the school district and got a referral for a counselor to get advice on how to help Taylor’s daughter deal with her mother’s arrest and the fallout that was to come. Prior and her new husband ultimately sought and won custody of Taylor’s daughter, who is now 12.  

Taylor’s daughter is on the witness list for the defense but Prior testified that they decided it would not be in the child’s best interest. So instead, defense attorney Jeff Harrelson showed more than a dozen photographs of Taylor with her children on various weekend trips, at family gatherings, at school and in the pool. They also played several jail calls in which Taylor chats with her children.  

Prior said she did not know about the big purchases her daughter was making in late 2019 and early 2020 or any of the financial issues, real or fabricated, she was having at the time as a result.   

While her family does have land with oil wells on it and they do get some royalties, the income is nowhere near the millions Taylor was telling others the wells were raking in. Besides, both of Prior’s parents and Prior herself would have to pass away before any of her inheritance would be passed down to her children. 

Prior told her daughter’s defense attorney that her ex-husband and Taylor’s father is not related to the family that owns the Morton Salt company that she knows of.  

Prior said she helped her daughter financially in 2019 with some medical bills and laughed sardonically as she testified about helping her daughter pay her car note at the same time she was “buying” a side-by-side with Wade and a brand-new car for his mother. She says she did not find out the extent of Tylor’s financial problems or about those big-ticket purchases paid for with hot checks until after the murder.  

Jurors also heard Prior’s version of events from the family gathering at Molly’s house around Christmas 2019. Wade Griffin has testified that Shonna seemed angry and short with them, which tracked with the stories Taylor had been telling him about her hateful mother.  

Prior explained that her irritation that day was simply that Taylor had blown in with her new boyfriend with plans to only stay for a few minutes. Prior testified that she was disappointed and told her daughter she was not going to spend half of their limited time in a back bedroom wrapping gifts when she could be out visiting with family. 

Prior denied knowledge of framing schemes and did not recall Taylor asking her to help get fellow inmate Phyllis “Granny” Dawson out of jail until Crisp replayed the jail call. She still claimed she did not know who DC was.  

Parker had been telling Dawson and others about a “Detective Chris,” or “DC,” whom she claimed believed she was innocent. As prosecutors made clear during Monday’s testimony, Detective Chris does not exist.

After Prior’s testimony, the biological aunt of Parker’s daughter took the stand. Jennifer Whiteside testified that Parker came to live with 19-year-old Donald Whiteside in a trailer on their family compound for a short time in 2009 when she was 17 and had become pregnant with his baby.

Jennifer said the relationship didn’t last long because her brother was cheating on Taylor, so she packed up and moved out. Jennifer said Donald has never seen his daughter, and Shonna Prior testified that her granddaughter has only ever known Parker’s first husband, Tommy Wacasey, as her father.

Parker’s brother Zachary Morton, also testified Tuesday. He testified that their father brought him to what he recognizes now as a “drug house” when he was a child, but he doesn’t not remember Taylor ever being there. He said their father did use both of them as pawns in his divorce from their mother and did not always put his children first.

For the most part, Morton said, Taylor took care of her children from what he could see.

“But there were times when she was not such a good mother?” Harrelson asked Morton on the stand.

“Yes, when she was chasing another man.” 

“For example?”

“I would say when she was chasin’ Wade would be the most recent. She didn’t necessarily give enough attention to (Parker’s daughter) at that time.”

It was a pattern Morton said he recognized from his father. 

“When dad was chasing other women or drugs, we were put on the back burner. It seemed like when Taylor was chasing another man, instead of the focus being on her children, it was on herself. It was all about her at one specific time.”

But, Morton testified, that stopped when Taylor was married.  

Morton also testified that Parker’s weight loss surgery in 2014 seemed to be a significant turning point in her life and behavior.

“It seemed like when Taylor was with Tommy that they loved each other, they cared about each other…nothing else mattered but her family. But after weight loss surgery, Taylor’s demeanor completely changed. Instead of her focus being on her family it was on what she wants to do with her personal life – or what more she could do for herself, in a sense.” 

Morton said he tried to confront his sister about her lies about her family’s money and property finances after he learned she had pulled his name into the elaborate deception, telling Griffin her brother was bringing a welding trailer to his house he could use to build an expensive fence Parker was asking him to put up. When Griffin reached out to him in a Facebook message, Morton knew nothing of it. So he called his sister and questioned her. She told him she did not know what she was going to do or how she was going to pay the thousands of dollars for the fence she had told Griffin she was going to pay. In a three-way call with their mother secretly on mute, Morton says he told Parker to call her mother because he did not have the funds to help.

Morton was also secretly in on the call when Parker called their mother. Parker she told her a different story. Morton thought it was outrageous and confronted his sister again.

“I was tired of the lies,” he said. “If she wants to lie, feel free, but the moment you bring me into a lie it becomes my problem, and I don’t want anybody misrepresenting me or lying and bashing me.”

So he told her she had until 10 p.m. that night to come clean with Griffin and admit there were no royalties, no money for the fence, and no welding trailer. It got heated. He hung up.

“I made my deadline, that was it. And I was just dead set on calling Wade at that time if I don’t get a message or call from Wade, and I got off the phone.”

But their mother asked Zach to give Taylor until the next day, so he did.

The next day, he woke up to a lengthy text from Griffin, telling him off.

“Basically, I can’t believe you would do this to Taylor. Y’all wouldn’t help her out.’”

Morton said the message was full of lies and it did not make any sense. From personal experience, Morton said, this didn’t seem like a message that would come from a “good ol’ country boy.”

He immediately tried to call the cell phone number the message had come from, but he was blocked. He was also blocked on Facebook. He got on his wife’s Facebook, but she was blocked, too.

“So I had no way of getting in contact with Wade.”

He later learned Taylor was claiming to be pregnant when he called his father to tell him he and his wife were expecting.

“And then he said, ‘Oh wow, Taylor is pregnant, too!’”

Morton said he and his father both knew she could not be pregnant. So he laughed and assumed his father was joking.

When the bomb threat was called in to Titus Regional Medical Center on Oct. 5, Morton says his first thought was that it might be Taylor.

Morton says he loves his sister and did not want anything to do with her case, but over time he realized he wanted to be helpful and honest and let the system play out with a trial and a jury deciding her fate. He confirmed on the stand that he has expressed his condolence to Reagan’s family and continues to be sorry for what happened to her.

“I will always,” he said.

Jurors also heard from Parker’s aunt, Molly Glass, who said her niece’s friends changed after her weight loss surgery, “and it just seemed like her morals got skewed.”

Glass saw the gastric bypass and her later hysterectomy as catalysts in Parker’s life.

“She gained confidence. She felt better. I believe that was causing some problems at home and then the hysterectomy happened, and that opened the door for an excuse. There was a lot of blame thrown around for that.”

She said Parker was going out a lot with her friends and stepping out on her husband.

Glass said she knew Parker’s Pecan Point purchase claims were a lie because she and her husband knew the people that were actually leasing it. When she questioned Taylor about it, she told her the doctor that owned the property was getting ready to free it up for sale.

When Glass called her out on lies she was posting on social media, Parker blocked her. She recounted the odd way her niece introduced her new boyfriend Wade to her mother at the family Christmas at her house in 2019.

She would later learn it was because Parker had told Wade her mother died by suicide in jail after a shootout with police trying to capture her for putting a hit out on her daughter, only to later turn up alive and well.

Glass talked to Parker’s former close friend, Stephanie Ott, who told her she felt like she was being duped about the pregnancy and she confirmed her suspicions: Taylor could not possibly be pregnant. She knew about the hysterectomy, but she did not know about the tubal ligation her niece had more than a year before that.

Glass worked at TRMC at the time Parker called in the bomb threat to the hospital. She says she called her boss and told him she thought it was her niece. She told her husband the same thing.

Taylor Parker’s maternal grandmother was the last to take the stand Tuesday.

Frost said she spent the weekends with her granddaughter when she spent about two weeks in the hospital in early 2017, where doctors ultimately determined she had migraines but was likely faking symptoms like a drooping face, right-side weakness, and difficulting walking and talking.

But on the stand Tuesday, Frost said she “certainly did” see symptoms and she did not think her granddaughter was faking them.

“I saw things that you weren’t able to fake. You can’t think hard enough about something to make the machines react.” 

Frost did know Parker was lying about her pregnancy in 2020, though. Word got back to the close-knit family quickly after the gender reveal was posted on social media. Like her daughter Shonna testified, there was no talk of any plan to confront Parker about the lie.

“It was general consensus that you can only carry that for nine months. Something’s going to fall through.” 

On Wednesday morning, Beaumont, Texas expert in future danger Dr. Edward Gripon testified that Parker is a pathological liar with a mix of several different personality disorders, but predicting future danger is difficult with no history of violence.

Gripon said the murder was an isolated incident, and Parker had no violent incidents in the two years she has bee in custody at the Bi-State Detention Center.

Former corrections officer Deirdra Cramer testified about how she came to work at the Bi-State jail in June 2021 and grew close to Parker during the five months she worked there. Cramer claimed she saw Parker being mistreated by jail staff because Reagan‘s husband Homer was a former corrections officer.  

“And so, it was like a vendetta against someone because they knew – they had a connection with him.“ 

Cramer sent Parker a letter in May 2022, telling her she thought about her a lot and that she wanted to be added to her visitor list so that she could come and pray with her. She also put $50 in Parker‘s inmate account so that she could call if she wanted to. But on the stand, Cramer testified that Parker never called because she never got the money. 

The former jailer testified that she did not believe she was manipulated by Parker in any way. Cramer said Parker never asked her to do anything that violated jail policy and that she never had any reason to shake down her cell, where searches conducted after she left the job turned up all kinds of contraband.

It was a shorter week than most, wrapping up a day early on Wednesday afternoon when the defense ran out of available witnesses. Testimony is expected to resume Monday with a neurologist from New York set to take the stand.