Of course, a vulnerable, then-seven-and-a-half-months-pregnant Hancock-Simmons deserved protection—the leading cause of death of pregnant women in th
Of course, a vulnerable, then-seven-and-a-half-months-pregnant Hancock-Simmons deserved protection—the leading cause of death of pregnant women in the US is murder—Dimmock points out. But also, “Taylor needed help,” she says. “There was a real catastrophe brewing and the idea that no one could intervene feels like a real failure.” A neurologist testifying for the defense said Parker experienced “frontal lobe syndrome,” a condition that describes a elaborate web of cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and motivational disturbances.
Today, Parker is the youngest of just seven women on death row in Texas, according to the state department of criminal justice. When I ask if Parker belongs on death row, Dimmock replies, “Oh God, do I want to admit that out loud?” She consults a Netflix publicist on our Zoom call who, to his credit, encourages the filmmaker to speak her mind. “I don’t really believe in death row,” Dimmock begins. “What she did to Reagan is enough, but the fact that Reagan’s three-year-old daughter was at home, I’ll absolutely make an exception for this one.”
Dimmock believes documentaries like hers and The Crash resonate, no matter the gender of the aggressor, because audiences latch onto the backstories of the victims. “In this film, even though the perpetrator is a female, the victim is a woman, so I still think women are relating to what they would have done in the same situation,” she says. “We are sitting from the vantage point of, and our sympathies are with, Reagan.”
The director actively grapples with her reasons for watching true crime, much less making it. “Violence is less of a female thing, so we’re watching these crimes from a place of trying to understand how we make sense of this,” says Dimmock, “because it feels quite foreign, the type of brutality that is exerted toward us. I made this, but I am also part of the audience and I think all the time about what is happening in my brain that makes this feel like something I need to see.”
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