200: Toxic Love Turns Deadly | The Brutal Murder of IG Influencer Alexis Sharkey
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Hey, True Crime Besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to an all-new episode of the True Crime Podcast, Serialistly, with me, Annie Elise. I hope you guys are having a fantastic start to your October. We're already like a week in, but I hope you guys are having a good day, a good start to your month. I wanted to give a quick shout out to Apple. They have featured us this month under their Creators We Love campaign, which is a great

is such an incredible honor. So you can take a look at that over on the Apple Podcast app. But we love partnering with them, and they are so incredible. And I also want to just give a shout out about the live tour. We are three shows down. And guys, honestly, I don't know how else to describe these shows other than electric.

The energy at these shows, it was sold out. So far we've done San Diego, Phoenix, and Orange County all sold out, and the energy is just so incredible. It's also been so fantastic meeting so many of you guys after the show one-on-one, hearing your stories, talking with you, meeting with you, and we have two shows left. That's it. Salt Lake City and Denver. And those shows are coming up. They are going to be amazing as well. We have some really special guests joining us.

So if you haven't gotten your tickets yet, but you were planning on going or you're thinking about going, definitely go check that out. It's at AnnieElise.com under the events tab. I think we have some tickets left. I don't know. The other show sold out. So these might be sold out by the time this is airing. But I would just say grab those tickets now before they're gone. But these shows have been really incredible. And like I said, so rewarding. So

I just want to say thank you if you have come to one of those, if you are going to come to one of those, or if you've just supported from afar. But it was my first tour and I couldn't have asked for anything more. Now, I want to jump right into today's case because it is one that has to do with social media, an influencer, domestic violence, secrets, and really some shady things and quite a few red flags when you start peeling things back. It's living your worst nightmare ever.

Truly. Each morning my husband and I wake up and say, "I just hoped it was a nightmare."

I hoped it wasn't real. Now, if you watch my YouTube channel, Tend to Life, you might be familiar with today's case. I covered it a few times back when it was first breaking, but I wanted to revisit it now because I never have done a full deep dive. There also have been so many different details that have surfaced, new information that has come to light, and I really wanted to dig in and cover everything in this case, everything that we know. This is the case of Alexis Sharkey.

We also have exclusive audio from one of Alexis's best friends, Chelsea Turnbow. She was kind enough and brave enough to talk with us about her friendship with Alexis and also the toxic relationship that Alexis was in and really what it all led to.

So I just want to thank her again for speaking with us because she has shared truly some very valuable insights with us. Alexis Sharkey was a 26-year-old young woman living in Texas, and Alexis was absolutely stunning. She was tall. She was slender. She had this gorgeous head of hair, long red hair that fell like right underneath by her rib cage. I mean, she was truly stunning.

She also was an Instagram influencer. She always took the right angles, knew the right photos to take of herself, was dressed to the nines, makeup was flawless. I mean, she truly was just beautiful. And being an Instagram influencer, I'll be honest, it's a lot of work. I don't know firsthand because I'm not an Instagram influencer, but I have friends who are. And it is a lot of work. It's not just about posting these beautiful pictures. It's about engaging. It's about

catering to what the audience wants, and it can be a grind. But apparently Alexis hated the word influencer. She saw herself more as a businesswoman because she wasn't really getting paid to influence people. She was paid to take photos. She was paid to market herself and all of the different products that she partnered with. And she just was generating a lot of content. It was definitely a business for her.

It wasn't just about looking good. It was also about being very, very organized and being responsible and really grinding and trying to work hard. And I think it is safe to assume that when somebody is good looking and has a career that is based around looks, whether it's being a model or being an influencer, it's easy to assume that they're just a pretty face, right? And nothing else. But Alexis was brilliant.

She had a degree in biology and she double minored in psychology and nutrition, none of which are easy subjects to learn. And when Alexis graduated from college in 2012, she was summa cum laude. Hell, she was in the top 2% of her class grade-wise for her entire college career, from freshman year to senior year.

So all to say, Alexis really did have it all. She had looks, she had smarts, she had a good work ethic. She pretty much could have done whatever she wanted to do with her life. And if you were to go by her social media accounts, you really would think that she did have it all. Here's how one of her best friends, Chelsea Turnbow, described her. She was such like a free spirit. Me and her, from the start, we just automatically like gravitated towards each other, uh,

it was weird. It was like we had this bond that was unbreakable. It was something that I've never experienced before. I've never had a bunch of girlfriends. I kind of kept to myself growing up and she just truly understood me and she cared so much about other people and other people's feelings. She always put other people before herself and that was something I admired about her.

And she was just such like a driven person and so like excited and ambitious about life. By 2020, Alexis was 26 years old and her Instagram was full of pictures of Alexis smiling and laughing. She was lounging in beautiful ritzy looking places. She was out getting in touch with nature. Of course, there were tons of pictures of her and her cats too. She truly just looked like she had a very happy and full life.

And in addition to her main account, she also had an Instagram account that she created for her cats. She babied them, she would take photos of them, she would post them, and a lot of people do that, right? A lot of people have Instagram accounts for their pets, and Alexis definitely did as well. Now, baked in with all of the photos of her cats, of her in these glamorous hotels, out with her friends, there were also plenty of pictures of her and her husband, Tom Sharkey. Now, Tom was a stark difference compared to Alexis.

Alexis was tall, slender, kind of almost looked a little bit shy in some of her photos, whereas Tom was extremely tall, taller than Alexis. He was a bodybuilder. He was very wide set. He had huge muscles. He looked a little bit more serious and more angry, just kind of almost seemed like, I

I hate this word, but like the big brute next to a young, beautiful girl. And he was also much older than Alexis. He was 20 years older than Alexis, to be exact.

Now, I'm not entirely sure when their first date was. It might have been around October of 2018 when they did a photo shoot together, but it sounds to me like Alexis and Tom might have known each other or started dating a little bit earlier in 2018. Apparently, Alexis was going through a little bit of a rough time that year. She was working at a restaurant in Odessa, Texas called Twin Peaks, and her Instagram career hadn't quite taken off. She

hadn't quite become this influencer yet. She had also recently called off an engagement to some other guy, so she was really trying to figure out what direction her life was going to take. After she had graduated from college, she wanted to take a year off and then start med school in 2018. But for whatever reason, she changed her mind and she decided not to go that route. So anyway, Alexis wasn't in a great place, and Tom was a regular at this restaurant where she was a server. So eventually, she started opening up to him.

And again, I don't know exactly what the timeline was from them connecting at that restaurant to them dating to then him popping the question, but I do know that she posted an engagement photo in June of 2019. Although whether that's when they got engaged or when they just announced it,

I'm not so sure. But in any event, they got married in December of that year. So we're talking six months or so after she posted that engagement photo. And remember, Alexis was 26. Tom was 48 years old. So we're not talking about a little minor age gap.

In fact, Tom had kids who were the same age as Alexis. So literally, she and his daughter could have gone to school together. There was definitely a large age gap here. And while age gaps aren't always a red flag, we definitely have covered cases in past episodes before where we know that there are some men out there who intentionally date women who are much younger.

These guys see these much younger women as easier to control because they don't have the same life experience yet. Maybe they're not as comfortable setting boundaries, maybe they aren't as comfortable standing up for themselves, but we have unfortunately seen a pattern like this. And that's not to say that anyone who is in a relationship where there is this large age gap is in danger, but it is something that we have noticed in certain cases.

We also know that older men sometimes tend to move fast, which is what we see here with Tom and Alexis. There was just those six months between the engagement announcement to the wedding. Then in January 2020, they moved to Houston together. Now once she was there, she got involved in a great group of friends. People really cared for her, and they really had her best interests in mind. How we became friends, it's actually like a really funny story. Um,

There was, let's say, Tanya, Lexi, Kendra, me, and we all met on Bumble BFF. We just all come from like the same background. You know, Kendra just moved here and she was trying to meet people. Tanya, she was a single mom at the time. And so was I. I was newly divorced. And

I know Alexis, we call her Lexi. She just moved here also. So we were all on there at the same time. And actually Tanya was the one who kind of like got us to go to dinner together. And ever since that night, we were just completely inseparable. And it's so funny because everyone's like, y'all met on Bumble BFF. Like what? And we just, we all understood each other. And there was just this undeniable bond

like friendship between all of us we all understood each other and we had so much compassion for one another our whole entire story is just it's crazy how we all met and I don't even know it's so many people made fun of us for it and it's to us it was just like so funny because usually people go on bumbles like meet guys or girls and no we were just trying to meet friends

According to Chelsea, her relationship with Alexis was especially important. They really connected, and I think it really shows the kind of people Alexis was lucky enough to have in her life. I can't even remember the holiday it was. I believe it was in September. So we...

We all, I guess it was her, Tom, and then me and John, the guy that I was dating at the time. And it was, I forget when it was, when was this? I would have to look back at pictures. Um, we all like did like a little cookout and they came over and it was just like us four, um,

And me and Lexi just like really bonded in that moment. That's like when our friendship like took this whole other level. We were talking about like personal things together, like things that we've been through. And even like Tom pulled me aside and he was like, I've never seen her like blossom like this, like with another friend. She's like so close to you. She tells me things about like how close y'all are.

And it just, I don't know, from that moment and that like evening, we just had this like unbreakable bond with each other. And I keep saying that, but she just understood me and I just understood her. And it was like, we understood each other without even having to talk. Like I would be thinking about her and then she would text me or it'd be like vice versa. So I think from that moment,

And apparently, all of that contrasts pretty drastically with Alexis' relationship to Tom. Although it wasn't always easy to figure out why or what was up. So her relationship with Tom, the funny thing is, is he didn't really come around that much. Like, there was multiple occasions where...

would just come out like with herself. And for the most part, like we just didn't really have the guys a part of our friendship. Like it'd be like occasionally, like they would meet us at dinner and we would all do like this little date night. But for the most part, we tried to keep it just girls night. She never really complained about him. She kind of kept it really private, but when he was around, you could see this like controlling this that he had with her for

For instance, like that night where me and her just like took our friendship to the next level. He was we were talking in the bathroom and we were like girls laughing with each other and we turn around and he was just like standing at the door staring at us. And I will never forget that moment where it just chills down my spine like.

There was some, there was this aura about him that was so dark. Like, and you know how they say like narcissists have like, they don't have like that spark in their eyes. That's kind of how his eyes looked. It was just almost like nothing was there, like no emotions. He just stood there and kind of like listened to us talk the whole time. And meanwhile, my boyfriend at that time was sitting on the couch, like doing his own thing.

So it was just kind of weird, but she never, she was just such a caring person. She never spoke badly about him. And I think it's because as women, we want to give men like multiple chances, like, oh, well maybe, and we try to play the blame game on ourselves. And she was such a caring and sweet person that I think she kind of, oh, well, maybe it's because of this. Maybe it's because of that. And in reality, in retrospect, no, it was him the whole time.

But yeah, she never really talked about him. And for the most part, she was just such a happy person. So you could never really get...

It's safe to say that by late 2020, the honeymoon period between Tom and Alexis was over already, after only about a year. That is, of course, if there ever even really was a honeymoon period. And I'm basing this on statements that Alexis made to friends of hers, and stories like the ones that Chelsea told us. Yeah, so there were a few times, actually, where I had this, like, question mark in my head about him as a person, and I was like,

we had this Halloween party at Tanya's house and all of us good friends got there first, helped Tanya set up for the party. And I skimmed through with like a video, like filming all of our friends together. And he just kind of, when the camera was coming to him, he kind of like freaked out and like tried to turn his face really quick. And I'm like, that's like not normal. You know, like why would someone not want to be like in videos with Tanya

a bunch of friends. It was kind of like he was hiding himself. And at that moment, I was like, what are you hiding from? And there was a few times where he would be telling me and John that he's worked for people who have hired him to be like a hit man. And at that time, he and John were like, oh, he's just like, that's crazy. Like, he just wants us to like him more. It just sounded absolutely absurd and insane.

So there were times definitely where we were like scratching our head about him.

But she always made it seem like he was a caring person. And all we can do at the end of the day is, like, believe our friends, right? So we all did question him as a person. That's 100%. I mean, she was just the most beautiful girl, free spirit. And I could see why he became so controlling. Apparently, when she was out with friends and just catching up on what was going on, Alexis pretty openly talked about how badly Tom was treating her.

She described him as controlling and manipulative, and she would do this in group settings where lots of people would hear her. She also told her friends that Tom had been physically violent with her. She opened up about it with at least four different people that she was close to. But also, it wasn't a secret that he was kind of a shit husband, and things were definitely now starting to come to a head. I actually vividly remember the instance where

we were all like, oh, something is not right. It was Tanya's birthday and we were setting up a surprise party for her. And, you know, usually Lexi is like very, she wants to be involved in the plan. She's very receptive. She loves giving ideas.

And she was kind of like reclosing a little bit towards Tanya's birthday. And Lexi would always show up like dressed to the nine. She always had her makeup done, the cutest outfits. And she showed up in this really cute pair of jeans and just like this plain white tee. She had no makeup on. Her eyes were swollen and everything.

she wasn't really wanting to talk to a lot of people about it. And, um, me and Kendra and Tanya kind of pulled her aside and we were like, what is going on? Like, is everything okay? And about this time she was thinking about separating with him and she's like, he's just being mentally abusive. Um,

verbally abusive. He, I went and like took my art, like I split our assets up. I'm like working in the steps to separate me and him. And she's like, it's just no longer working. Um, and then I pulled her aside and I was like, okay, well tell me like what's going on. And that's where she was like, he is so mean to me, like physically. And I'm like, what? Like you've never said this before. And she's like, I've just tried to protect him. Um,

And I can no longer do that for him anymore. And she's like, it's just so toxic and I just can't do it. And that night, I believe they went out and she met one of our guy friends who was a DJ in Houston. He still is. His name was Seb. And

I believe this is what led up to the whole entire thing is, you know, he found a text message probably from Lexi and Seb, and he just kind of like snapped and saw red. And a person like him that already struggles with major insecurities, and now he's losing like the love of his life. And I think it was more so lust on his side. Like, I think that's what made him snap is like, he thought he was losing the person that like motivates him. And I think that's what made him snap.

People who, you know, I'm pretty sure he did steroids. He was majorly into like the fitness world. And, you know, that messes with people's brain chemistry and, you

I think he just had this deep, deep anger inside of him that just finally snapped and came out. And it's frustrating that we don't know a ton of details about what did happen behind closed doors because Alexis never filed any charges against Tom. She also never filled out any paperwork related to these allegations. But I also don't think that she had any reason to lie to her friends.

She also took a trip to Mexico with some friends, and while she was traveling, Alexis admitted to those same friends that she was afraid for her life. She thought that Tom might actually try to hurt her. She made similar comments during another trip, this one to Marfa, Texas.

During this trip, according to her friends, Alexa said that Tom, quote, had been putting hands on her. Later on, when she was talking with another friend, she got even more detailed about the kind of abuse and the kind of mistreatment that she was getting from Tom. Specifically, she said, quote, he strangles me and chokes me out, and I black out and wake up on the bathroom floor every single time.

Now, I mean, that's sickening in and of itself. It's bad enough for something like that to happen once, to happen ever. But over and over again? Enough times for Alexis to say something like, every single time this happens? Now, of course, Alexis's friends were all worried about her. Who wouldn't be? It ended up getting bad enough that Alexis and Tom were legally separated, and Alexis was fully prepared and ready to get a divorce. That is, at least, according to her friends.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that she actually filed the paperwork for a divorce, so pretty much everything that we know about these relationship problems comes directly from her friends. I

I've also heard that maybe Alexis did have all of the paperwork ready to go, but that she hadn't served him yet, that she hadn't served him the forms, and that perhaps she and Tom had talked about a divorce and agreed to go through with it. So basically, she was in the process of officially separating, and she was working her way up to it. I'm pretty sure she was just in the process of

of leading up to file for divorce. I know for a fact that she was in motion. She went to the bank to separate their bank accounts and she pulled me aside and she told me that, you know, she was making more money than him at that time. Um,

So it might have had to do something with money and she was becoming her own person and she moved to this city where she was completely thriving and meeting people her age. And I think she just started to realize like, oh wait, there's more to life. So I don't know for certain if she was already in the process of filing for divorce. It was something that was like definitely in the front of her mind and she was working hard.

into action to make all of that happen. Alexis's friends also said that around the time that Alexis may or may not have filed for divorce, she started making a lot more social plans all the time. Every single night, basically, she would have some excuse to go out. Now, it wasn't just because she wanted to go see people and that she wanted to go hang out. It was more that she didn't feel safe being at home alone with Tom. She would find ways to make sure that that would never happen.

And for his part, it sounds like Tom was not 100% ready to give up on the marriage. He was still fighting to keep Alexis. But realistically, Alexis didn't need him. Her Instagram was now blowing up, which it had been since basically early 2020 when she and Tom first moved to Houston. She also made new friends, good friends. She had a good support network around herself. It wasn't like she needed him anymore.

Now, I will say this, Alexis wasn't exactly this outgoing extrovert. She didn't have a humongous entourage or anything like that, but like I said, the people that she was close with, she was super close with. Even though she only knew them for a few months, they were very, very close. So she was doing great in her life, aside from the romantic department, that is.

In fact, she was now making so much money from Instagram that she didn't even need a day job anymore. She didn't need that job at the restaurant. She also certainly didn't need Tom and his controlling and violent bullshit that she was putting up with. Now, speaking of Instagram, just for a moment, and how it works in hitting the algorithm, getting big, getting your content seen, and getting it out there...

You can't really get seen unless you are posting all the time. So Alexis's friends were used to constantly seeing new photos of her and new videos of her just all the time, going up basically every single day. That's how you hit the algorithm. That's how it works. But even ignoring Alexis's Instagram activity and her TikTok activity, which were both very, very popular, she was always on her phone nonstop. If you texted her, she would reply literally within a few seconds.

If you called her, she would pick up the phone. And if you posted something about your own personal life on your social media accounts, she would be the first one to comment or to reach out and see if you're okay. She would ask what was going on. She was just very, very active through social media and on her device via tech.

And my point is with all of that is that she was always super, super reachable for the people that she was close to. So it was very strange when Alexis just stopped posting completely right after Thanksgiving Day in 2020.

Now for context, that year Thanksgiving fell on the 26th, and that day Alexis had had Thanksgiving dinner with some friends. They took a photo together where they're all seen smiling, and it's now believed that that was the last photo that she ever took while she was alive.

And it looks nice. It's just a couple of friends posing together, looking comfy at home, sipping some wine, enjoying the holiday. A few of her friends then saw her out and about on Black Friday, the 27th. One of those friends was named Tanya Ricardo, and Tanya was one of the people who had dinner with her the day before.

So at around 6 p.m. on Black Friday, Tanya and Alexis chatted a little bit. They made plans to meet up the following day on Saturday to go see a movie. So on Saturday morning, Tanya reached out to Alexis just to say hi and to confirm their plans.

But Alexis didn't reply. Now, this was weird because like I said before, Alexis was basically attached to her phone. It wasn't just a way to be in touch with people. I mean, it was her world. It was her work. It was everything. It was her career. It really encompassed everything that she needed to do or where she needed to be. To make matters worse, though, after that, she didn't put up any new posts, not on Instagram and not on TikTok.

Which, okay, in all fairness, I get it. We all do need time off, especially if it was a major holiday weekend. Maybe she wanted to take a little break from constantly churning out all of this new content. However, it was pretty out of character for her. Literally nobody had heard from Alexis since about a half an hour after that 6pm chat with Tanya on Friday night. She did hop on Facebook and she liked some posts here and there. She did a laugh emoji here, a little like there, you know, things like that.

But from roughly 6.30 p.m. onward, it was just radio silence. Literally, nobody could get a reply to their calls, to their text messages. Her read receipts were turned on, which is where when you send a message, you can see if somebody has read it or not, even if they don't respond. And because of this, people could see that she wasn't even seeing their messages. They were only showing as delivered, not read. She wasn't even leaving people on read. She was just gone. Gone. Gone.

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So since nobody had heard from Alexis in a while, Tanya drove down to Alexis' apartment with another friend and they started knocking on her door. But nobody answered. They sat around and they waited for a couple of hours, just in case Alexis was out running errands or maybe was going to come home soon. They just wanted to wait. They wanted to check it out for themselves. But she never came back. There was no answer.

There was no sign of her anywhere. So that's when Tanya got worried enough that she reported Alexis missing. From there, it was really no time at all before her family and her friends were all just flooding social media with photos of Alexis, and truly just begging people to reach out if they saw her, if they knew her, if they knew where she was, if they had heard anything. They were just looking for answers. And I'm going to let her best friend Chelsea describe Alexis's disappearance, because

because it involves a truly chilling moment where she felt like she just knew in her gut that something was wrong. I can't say really crazy how we kind of like figured it out. So like I said, me and her just shared like the same energy and I will never forget. I was playing, it was like Thanksgiving break and I was with my family and we were playing trouble at our kitchen table and we

My boyfriend at the time called me and he said, Hey, I just want to let you know, like Tom called me and said that let's, he's like missing. She ran away. Like someone, he hopped the fence or she hopped the fence and he tried to chase after her. And she got inside the sports car. And I'm like, what? And it was just weird to me because the last text message she sent me was like an hour before all of this took place. And I,

I never responded back because I was with my family. So I started immediately texting her like, hey, where are you?

And a little bit of backstory. I texted her maybe a couple of days before all of this transpired. And I told her like, you know, I have a two bedroom apartment. Lennon's, she never sleeps in her own room anyways. Lennon's my daughter. And I was like, why don't you just come stay with me for a little bit? Like, I feel more safe that you will be inside of my home instead of staying there where he's just coming in and out. And she was like, oh, I think it'll be fine. You know, she was just kind of like,

pressing down the issue a little bit. And so moving forward to the night that he called my ex-boyfriend now, the boyfriend at the time, yeah, John called me and was like, yeah, it's kind of weird. He says like she's missing. And so I start panicking. I'm calling her. She's not responding. And I'm like, that's just weird. Like,

she has always been there's a problem she contacts all of us right like we are her best friends we're the people that is her family here because our family lives out of state and so I started calling Tanya and Kendra and I'm like we gotta rally up like there's something seriously wrong and all of them agreed meanwhile John and the boyfriends are like oh y'all are just kind of like freaking out like don't freak out like it's totally fine she probably just wants some space

And I remember telling them like, no, this is not normal. Like something is something inside of me is screaming to let's figure out what's happening. And I'll never forget that night. I went to sleep without hearing anything from her. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I shot up out of bed in a panic. And I heard this voice in my ear say, find my body.

And it is, I get the chill, like I have the chills right now. It is the most chilling thing that has probably ever happened to me. It was so vivid. And then I woke up the next morning and I called Sean and I said,

John, I think like he killed her and he's like, oh, that's crazy. Like, don't say that. That's insane. Like, calm down. You're going to the utmost extreme. And then I called the girls after and I said, guys, like, I really think he did something to her. And at that time, they were all like, I 100% think so, too. So it wasn't like we were all separated and being like, oh, no, like, that's crazy. All of us had this like instinct of something has happened and he did it. That was like the one vivid moment.

feeling that I had that it felt like she was, it's literally her, it sounded like her voice was in my ear and it was the craziest thing. Other than that, I think we were just in this fight or flight mode the whole entire time trying to help like the detectives. And we just didn't have time to ever process this. Um, there were some instances where I was like, Oh, you know, I think he probably did it here. He

Now what's really weird about all of this is how Alexis's husband, Tom, responded to her disappearance. First, he didn't report her missing. It was her friends who did that. And you know, it's not like he just failed to notice that his literal wife had gone out and hadn't come back. And

And sadly, Alexis didn't make it back home. Ever. Instead, her body was found on the same day that she was reported missing. Alexis was completely nude, and she was lying in a ditch at the side of the road. She was about three miles from the apartment where she and her husband Tom lived. Which, how dehumanizing is it that she was just thrown on the side of the freeway, like garbage, nude, just discarded like that?

And the only reason that she was even found was because a sanitation worker spotted her while he was driving by. He literally saw her feet sticking out from some bushes. Now, even from the road that he was driving on and spotting her as his vehicle was moving, he knew that it was a dead body. When he called the police, he said that, okay, maybe it was a possibility that it could have been a mannequin. But deep down, he knew that that wasn't the case. Because

because he also admitted that he was too scared to even get out of his truck to go see for himself. He wanted the police to come handle it. Sure enough, some investigators went to the scene, and pretty quickly they identified the body as an actual dead body. Specifically, Alexis's. Now, since she was naked and obviously didn't have any ID on her, they had to get her fingerprints in order to identify her body for sure.

There also were no obvious injuries on her, no clear cause of death that anybody could determine without doing an autopsy. In fact, at first, the police thought that maybe she had taken something and possibly overdosed, because that would explain how somebody would die without leaving any bruises, any cuts, any scrapes,

It didn't even look as though there was any sort of struggle. Her body was clean, meaning it looked as though it had almost been placed there, just gently laid down in this area of brush and weeds and branches. So according to the investigators in the beginning, the only thing that made sense, if there was no sign of a struggle, was that she possibly OD'd and just bled.

passed out and then died. But a lot of Alexis's friends said that she was definitely not the sort of person to mess around with drugs. She was responsible. And at her wildest, she might have, yes, had a couple of drinks with dinner, but she certainly wasn't out of control or anything like that. And it's like what I said before, she wasn't the stereotypical party girl that you might think of when you hear that she was this influencer.

Sometimes people hear influencer and they think, oh, they're going to all the glamorous parties, the after parties, they have access to alcohol, to drugs, to everything. But that's not how Alexis was. She was much more about having a few close friends, spending quality time with them at dinner, catching up on life, maybe having a glass of wine, that sort of thing. Certainly not a drug-fueled lifestyle so much so that she would OD. In fact, Chelsea said, quote, if she did overdose,

somebody did it to her. She didn't do that to herself. Alexis's mother, Stacey Robinote, also told the press that she was pretty sure that Alexis had been murdered. There was no autopsy report available to the public yet, but even without knowing the cause of death, she just had a mother's intuition, an instinct, a gut feeling that somebody had killed Alexis.

This was not an accident. We're very broken. We're very brokenhearted. It's just so, it's so painful for such, being someone so bright and having so much to offer just to be gone, snuffed out. And I don't know why. I don't know why. And the horrific nature of her last moments must have been, it's, I can't even, I can't even go there. I do. I do.

I do believe she was murdered, yes. From what I've been able to gather, as well as a mother's gut, I learned very young as a mom to trust my gut.

And I don't, it's not letting me down. So everybody was defending Alexis's reputation, saying she didn't struggle with drugs, with alcohol. She certainly wasn't a party girl, nothing like that. But you know who wasn't defending Alexis's reputation and who wasn't pushing back against all of the speculation? Her husband, Tom. He actually kind of went in with that official theory, just...

agreeing with the idea that, sure, of course, she must have overdosed. And no real surprise, but he was acting even more suspicious in all sorts of other ways, too. Almost immediately after Alexis's body was found, I mean, seriously, right away, Tom posted on Facebook saying, quote, Now,

I don't like to criticize people for how they grieve and how they mourn, because I know that death and grief can look differently for everybody. Everybody handles it differently. So I usually don't like to come for somebody for the way that they handle it. But I do have to tell this story honestly, and I will say this, whether you think it's fair or not, some people thought that that post of his did not sound super sincere.

that it almost sounded a little over the top. I mean, my world, my everything. It maybe felt a little too poetic for Tom. It even sounded like something that maybe he had come up with in advance, sort of like a, how do I make people think that I'm actually upset when I'm not? That kind of thing.

And again, I'm not saying it was right to attack him over this post, but people clearly were. Something just wasn't sitting right with the public, and just 49 minutes after he made that post, he followed it up with another Facebook post. This one said,

Others were wasting time talking about other things. Basically, crap talk. And if my wife would have seen this, she would have been disappointed in your actions. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. I have been assisting the deputies and making phone calls to find out what happened to my wife. Next time, stop and think and realize you don't know it all. So definitely a very passionate, very angry, very emotional post.

And this post got a little over 150 likes.

but it got more than 1,000 replies. Because a lot of people were calling out the fact that he was coming out swinging right after learning that somebody that he loves, his own wife, was dead. He also was making comments that he felt like people were making accusations against him. He said that he was getting literal death threats from people who assumed that he was the one who murdered Alexis. And some people definitely thought that he was much more upset about people making these accusations against him

than he was even about his own wife's death. And that's what it seemed for a while to the friends, to the family, to the public, that he was so hell-bent on defending his character and his innocence, and he wasn't hell-bent on finding out who murdered his wife. There was no post saying, my world, my everything, I love you so much, we're gonna find who did this to you, we're gonna hold them responsible, we will get you justice. It was nothing like that.

It was my world, my everything. How am I affected? How am I heartbroken? What has this done to me? Then follow-up posts saying, everybody's accusing me. I'm the victim. I'm doing this. This is all the things I've done. Just really defending himself and losing sight a little bit, in my opinion, of the fact that his wife was murdered and that they haven't found her murderer yet.

And the public picked up on this right away. Tom gave an interview about a week after Alexis's body was found as well. And the entire time, it seemed as though he was just deflecting. A lot of statements just kind of saying like, hey, look over there, look at that, don't look at me. Kind of just trying to put the light on something or someone else. Right now, Alexis is...

husband, Tom Sharkey, tells us that he's working with HPD homicide detectives, giving them access to anything they want, turning over emails, messages, and phone records. We had a six-minute conversation today where he told me that following his wife's death,

death threats. He sounded very upset. Tom Sharkey s the happy person seen on was, there's always other

I was the one holding her, cuddling her, and building her back up." He went on and on about how great their marriage was and how he had tried so hard to support Alexis, even when she was emotionally distraught and, in his words, troubled. He said that she had been struggling a lot in the past few months, and that sure, yes, her social media was full of her smiling, her out and about, having fun, but that all of that was all for show, just for likes, just to build her brand.

And we do know that social media, especially Instagram, is the highlight reel. Very rarely are people posting authentic posts of trouble in their life or things that they're struggling with occasionally. But we know that you usually take what you see with a grain of salt. And according to him, a lot of the time, the only way that he could keep her going and keep her feeling good was to hold her and to cuddle with her.

to be there for her, her security blanket, her teddy bear, which to me it feels like, and I'm just speculating here, I don't know for sure, but it almost kind of started to seem as though he was trying to plant the seed that Alexis may have been suicidal.

and that she possibly could have taken her own life. And her friends had said that she wasn't the kind of person to use controlled substances for fun, but it seems like Tom was trying to imply that she might have overdosed on purpose. And again, that's just my interpretation, but it feels to me like he was trying to make people assume that she might have done this to herself so that they wouldn't suspect him. Or maybe he was just talking about her emotional problems, and how he was supposedly supporting her because he wanted to make himself look better.

I mean, either way, it just came across as a little bit gross and almost manipulative. It's also something that Alexis' friends absolutely denied. The girl never struggled from mental issues. Her mental stability was very strong. She was such like a strong-willed person, just happy all the time.

The only time that I saw her when she was so sad was that night at Tonya's birthday where her eyes were whelped up and you could tell she'd been crying and you can tell like she was so stressed. And that's not her not being mentally stable. That was a man that came into her life that was ruining her mental stability. And she was such a strong person that she knew she had to walk away from that.

So people questioning her mental state or it's so irrelevant because the girl was the happiest person that you could ever come across. In one interview, one of Alexis's friends said she had no demons. She didn't have demons. And I know that that is what people are speculating. And that's not what it was. She was always happy, always had a smile on her face. A lot of people looked up to her. She was just very, very happy.

positive, always positive, always very knowledgeable, knew a lot about what was going on, loved being an influencer, as you can see, and sharing tips and tricks about makeup and hair and fashion and

If we needed her for anything to do with that, she was the girl to go to, for sure. And that reporter, who had talked to Tom, also talked to another one of Alexis's friends, who painted a very different picture. What are you doing, Lex?

This is just authentic, silly, weird. Just some of the descriptions Devin Styler used talking about her friend Alexis Sharkey. When you think of an ideal woman, it's Lex. She, I always told everybody she had it all. She was brains. She was beauty. Somebody could just throw her on. Sorry. Somebody could just throw her on the side of the road.

like garbage, you know, it just like she was nothing. It just, it, it astonishes me. It blows me away that,

such a beautiful, such a horrible and disgusting thing could happen to such a beautiful person because nobody deserves that. Now going back to Tom, he even said that the last time that he saw her, it was after they had dinner to celebrate Thanksgiving. But remember, that was the day after because she spent actual Thanksgiving with her friends. And he had that photo that she took with her friends on Thanksgiving to prove it. So according to Tom, Alexis ate with him on Friday night and

and she also had quite a bit to drink. Then, she apparently wanted to go out. He says that he warned her about the dangers of driving under the influence, and again, basically implying that Alexis might have gone missing because of some bad decision that she made on her own, like she was either drunk enough to drink and drive without him intervening, or that she was just reckless and wanted to go party some more, things like that. But Tom did admit that when Alexis left the house, she was not driving.

Which is fair, it wouldn't make any sense for a drunk driving incident to end up with her naked on the side of the road without a single mark on her. And when her body was found, there was also no car nearby. So again, it makes sense that she would have had to have been out and about on foot if she really did leave alone. Except Tom also told the police that she didn't actually walk away. He told them that same story that he had told her friend Chelsea.

that Alexis only walked far enough to get to the street, which involved jumping over a fence that ran around the apartment. Then she got into a strange car and they drove off. And I do find that interesting because Alexis's friends said that she would never just walk off on her own. She would have called somebody to come pick her up. Which...

which could be consistent with Tom's story about her getting into a stranger's car, maybe it was an Uber, or maybe it was somebody that Alexis knew but Tom didn't. Still though, why jump the fence? I mean, the story just made no sense. I think that Tom was kind of trying to victim blame here a little bit and blame Alexis saying, oh, she died because she was so depressed or because she was drunk. She clearly did something that she wasn't supposed to do and that ultimately got her killed, that kind of thing.

And those statements might have worked if we didn't know her cause of death, and if it looked like there was a shot in hell that she could have died from an overdose or a suicide or even a normal traffic accident. But clearly, that wasn't going to be the case here at all. Because when Alexis' autopsy results came in, they showed that she had been strangled. So Alexis' autopsy results are back.

and it says that she was strangled to death, that that was her cause of death. And I know that I have touched on this a little bit in recent episodes, but I need to emphasize how personal all of this was.

Strangling is something where the killer has to either look the victim in the eyes or be right up close behind them. They have to be so close, in fact, that they have to be able to reach this person's neck. So even if you're using something other than your hands, like a belt or a garrote or something like that, you can't choke somebody from far away. And it's usually a method of murder that we see when somebody knows the victim personally.

and more than that, has a very specific and passionate hatred for the victim. They want to watch this person suffer and die. And if you're not strangling somebody from the back and you're doing this from the front, just think about that for a moment. It sometimes can take upwards of five minutes for somebody to suffocate to death. So for five minutes, your hands,

intensely wrapped around somebody's throat, quite literally sucking the life out of them and just looking at them in the eye. That is very, very personal. And that's why a lot of the times when there are murders that we cover where strangulation is the cause of death,

A lot of the time, the police rule out that it could have even been random, that it could have been a random robbery or a break-in, because it is just so personal that, more times than not, in random killings, the perpetrator will use a weapon of some sort, because they don't want to get that close. And in Alexis's case, you add in the fact that she was stripped naked and dumped on the side of the road? I mean, there's a lot of disdain there, right?

It feels like it's something that you would want to do to somebody when you would want to humiliate them or dehumanize them or stick it to them just one final time. And it certainly was not something that Alexis did to herself. In fact, within just a few hours of the news hitting the internet that Alexis was dead, everybody had a theory. Everybody.

So I'm going to talk about some of those rumors that were going around, and blanket warning right off the bat, these theories are unverified. So use your own best judgment on whether to believe it or not, and do your own research, do all of the things. But one very early theory was that Alexis died specifically because of her career as an influencer.

or, as she would have put it, as an online social media business person. Because when you get to a certain level of fame, of notoriety, usually you also in turn get some sort of stalkers with that. You get weirdos. So people thought, okay, maybe one of them wanted to hurt her. Maybe somebody became obsessed with her. She was absolutely gorgeous. She had this life that so many people aspired to have as well. So maybe there was some sort of stalking element there.

There were also a lot of rumors going around, especially on Reddit, that Alexis died because she had an unhealthy relationship with one of her sponsors. And I'm going to say this right now. I'm just repeating what other people have said. I know I said that before, but I really just want to be extra clear now. I'm not endorsing this theory at all. I'm just covering it because it's an important part to this story. But Alexis worked for a company called Monet.

It was basically one of those MLM type setups where she was trying to sell shampoos, trying to sell other hair products, all the products that they made. And then the more that she sold, the more money that she made. And as we know, Alexis was making bank. She was really good at this. It probably didn't hurt that she had all those Instagram followers as well that she could advertise to and that would buy what she was promoting and buy what she was using. Because again, there was a level of aspiring to be just like her.

But anyway, Alexis wasn't only selling these products, she also had people in her downstream. Now, if you know anything about how MLMs work, or even if you don't, basically it's the idea that people were working for her.

They're not exactly employees, but you recruit other people to sell, just like you're selling, and then you make a commission based on all of their sales as well. And so you slowly start getting this downstream below you to where you're now making money off of other people's sales, and it makes the burden of you trying to sell much less. Monet calls these salespeople mentors, and that's also what Alexis called herself on her Instagram profile. She was a Monet mentor.

And like I said, she was making lots of money and she was all in on this Monet business model. In 2019, she did well enough that the company sent her to this big fancy conference in Cancun. However, all of the people underneath her, in her downline, they weren't doing so well.

they weren't making the big bucks that Alexis was. Not that that was Alexis's fault. I mean, the company itself, Monet, got into some trouble in the state of Florida, not where Alexis lived in Texas, but, you know, Florida. So still, it was big news. They had to pay $82,000 in damages.

because the state ruled that they had used misleading advertisements, that they were preying on their employees. I mean, it was just a mess. A lot of the allegations against the company and the products also claimed that the shampoos were making them lose hair. Customers had bought this stuff to get, you know, healthy, shiny, full-bodied hair, and they ended up with no hair at all, or red patches, losing hair, things like that. It would irritate their skin, it would give them rashes. This, again, all according to reports.

Alexis, however, defended these products online. She said Monet was great. She didn't understand where all of the criticism was coming from, and she said that she was going to keep selling their products. So the theory goes that there were a lot of people who didn't really like Monet as a product. Either they were customers who thought that they had gotten ripped off and had some sort of bad reaction to the product, or that it was somebody in Alexis's downstream maybe blaming her for recruiting them and getting them into this MLM to begin with.

And again, according to this theory, if you believe this speculation, whoever this disgruntled person was is the one who killed Alexis. Now, there's no evidence that Alexis' Monet work had anything to do with her murder. I mean, none, none whatsoever. This was all speculation. It was just people trying to wrap their minds around it, trying to put guesses out there, theories out there. But none of it really had any concrete proof. However, what I do think is interesting...

regarding the whole Monet situation, is that after Alexis was found dead, other influencers who also sold Monet started posting ads for their products with Alexis's photo on them. It was almost like they were trying to capitalize on all of the attention of the story and all of the clicks that her name was getting just so that they could sell shampoo.

Which, I gotta say, that is pretty gross. I mean, I'm sure that there was nothing nefarious there, I'm sure it was mostly about finding a trendy hashtag to jump on or boosting views, but still, it really did feel like these influencers, and by extension, Monet itself, was trying to profit off this young woman's death. Not lift her up, not honor her memory, but just get the money and get the clicks.

Now, other people with other theories thought that Alexis might have been cheating on Tom, and that her boyfriend was actually the one who killed her. Which, it makes sense, right? I mean, how many times have we seen an affair where somebody gets jealous and they kill the cheater? And the fact that her murderer stripped Alexis naked? It does feel like they wanted to embarrass her, maybe even slut-shame her for not being a loyal, devoted wife or girlfriend.

And in fact, once these rumors about a possible lover started coming out, some guy actually came forward on Instagram and literally said that, yes, he was the side guy. Not that he actually committed the murder, of course, or had anything to do with it, but he said that he loved Alexis and that he would never want to hurt her.

But he also said that they had, in fact, been together while she was married to Tom. The guy I'm talking about is named Sebastian Marmoleo, who went by Seb for short, and he's the one that Chelsea mentioned earlier. And for somebody with nothing to hide who hadn't done anything wrong, he was acting a little bit suspicious. He was going through his Instagram account, he was deleting a whole bunch of pictures, I'm assuming pictures of Alexis and him together, but to be honest, I don't know that for sure, but it just seemed a little bit odd.

And either way, it looks bad, for sure, to be taking down these posts that could be possible evidence in a murder investigation. But you know who else it looks bad for? Alexis's husband, Tom. I mean, think about it. If those rumors were true, and Alexis was cheating on him,

That could have been a very clear motive for him to hurt her. And if they weren't true, he did still have motive, because we already have pretty strong evidence that Tom was violent. And yes, that evidence all came from her friends, and okay, sure, they might have been lying, but I don't see any reason why they would have been. Especially as more details about Tom's past came to light.

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Back when Alexis was first murdered and the story hit the news, I started doing some digging. This was years ago. And I came across some court documents. And in my opinion, these documents were very telling and very indicative of Tom's behavior and his life.

his level of control, jealousy, narcissism, if you will. And I'm going to just give you the high-level overview. We know that Tom had been previously married. I don't know if he had been married once or twice before Alexis, but we know he had grown kids who were Alexis's age, and these court documents were from his ex-wife.

In these, she's alleging all sorts of horrific behavior by Tom. She's requesting that the court restricts his rights to the kids, that she gets sole custody. And we've seen this in toxic, tumultuous custody disputes. But what we don't often see is that Tom's own family also requested that his rights to the children be restricted.

They said that he suffered from suicidal ideations, from anger issues that he could potentially be threatening, and they thought that it would be in the children's best interest if they were with the ex-wife and if he did have restricted access. But not only that, there was also information in these documents that Tom had retaliated against his ex by sending sensitive photos to her employer.

Now, if you're familiar with this, you know where I'm going. Revenge porn is a very real thing. Whether it's nude photos, private videos you take with your lover, your spouse, whomever, and then they are shared either on the internet or...

with employers, like in this case, all as a means to humiliate and to ruin somebody's life. There are a lot of different laws in place now protecting people from revenge porn. But in these court documents, it cited that he did send sensitive photos to her employer. So it illustrated a history of somebody who was vengeful,

controlling, narcissistic, if you will. And it just wasn't looking good for Tom. Because now we're seeing a bigger picture as to who he is, aside from just this person that he is trying to peddle himself as on Facebook, the grieving husband, the one who's so helpful, which we're going to get to more of that. But does that mean that he was involved? Oh,

Or could that just be a horrible, horrible coincidence, and that he maybe was a horrible person in his past 10 plus years ago, but now has reformed, and was the doting husband the loving husband? And would this information skew people's perception of Tom, all while the real murderer got away? Either way, affair or not, Tom did not come away from this investigation looking good.

And meanwhile, Chelsea and Alexis's other friends were all watching him very closely. They were pretty sure that he was the one responsible and that he had dumped Alexis's body. I guess we all played like little detectives a little bit because at the end of the day, this was our best friend and we didn't think things were happening quickly enough. And time is of the essence when you're trying to find a missing person.

So me, Kendra and John would drive past her apartment. And the most chilling, chilling thing, we pulled into her parking garage and we saw Tom for the first time. And this is backstory. This is like after he's called us multiple times and everything.

He told everyone, like, y'all need to stop calling me. The only person that I'm going to talk to is Chelsea because Lexi trusted her the most. And, you know, all these recordings the detectives have, we recorded every single phone conversation we had with him. And we're just, you know, stroking his ego a little bit like, yeah, that's so crazy. Like, who do you think did this? Like, do you think she was like cheating on you?

And the scenarios that he was coming up with were just, you could tell it was like coming from a guilty soul. So.

This is like during that time when he's like calling us. So we show up to the apartment complex and we're in John's truck and we see him at the entrance of where they go in for their apartment, like the doors. And we're like, oh my God, like it was just the craziest feeling. And we remembered what kind of truck he had. So we were going through the parking garage trying to find his truck.

And we parked next to it and there was trash bags in the backseat and suitcases in the back of his truck. And to know that like she was sitting in that truck and her body was in there and reliving that experience because at that time we obviously didn't know how he transferred her body.

And it was just gut-wrenching to find out later, like, oh my God, we were literally right by that truck. So the theory was that she told Tom that it was over and that she was done and that she was going to serve him those divorce papers and that he was pissed that she was leaving him, but also pissed that she had all of these friends to spend the holiday with.

However, the police were pretty tight-lipped about who they were suspecting. But so far as the general public was concerned, pretty much everyone was zeroing in right on Tom. Now, first of all, he told that story about warning Alexis about drinking and driving, which was a little bit of a surprise to him.

which sounds like complete BS now that it was clear that she had been murdered, and it just seemed really apparent to so many people that he was pointing fingers anywhere he could to get the attention away from himself. And this next detail, honestly, I'm not gonna lie, it angers me to no end, and I'm gonna try really hard to stick to the facts and not go off on some kind of rant, but no promises, but around the time that Alexis's body was found,

Tom started telling this story, which, in my opinion, was very self-serving, kind of trying to make himself look like the hero in a murder investigation. Basically, if anybody was willing to listen to him, he would say that he was the one who figured out that Alexis was dead. Not that he was the one that broke the news to the public or anything like that, but instead, Tom basically took credit for solving the case, or at least the missing persons case.

For what it's worth, the person who actually publicly announced Alexis' death was her mother. She put up some photos of Alexis on Facebook, along with text which said, It's with a deeply broken heart that Mike and I want to let you know that Lexi's body has been found. We cannot begin to thank you all for your love and the kind words that you've extended to our family. Please give us this time to grieve this incredible loss to our family and this world. We will miss you, love.

Which I have to just say, what a sweet post, and it's always amazing to me that anybody can be together enough to speak or put words together publicly at all after this kind of loss, let alone write something so thoughtful. But I want to talk about what Tom did in this moment, and what Tom was saying, and the weird stories that he was telling about himself.

Because apparently while everybody else was searching the area around the city and hoping that she was still alive, Tom, according to himself, realized that he should be checking the morgues in the area. And that apparently is when he found Alexis's body. No one in her family had been notified yet, he was the one who identified her, and he's the one who helped everyone realize the sad news that Alexis had passed away.

Now, I don't know for sure whether or not that's true. Maybe he really did track down the morgue and identify Alexis before anybody else knew anything. I don't know the full details on the exact order of events that went on from Alexis being found in the ditch to then everybody being notified. But I'll also be honest, I'm not really buying it.

And part of that is because Tom said that nobody had been able to identify Alexis's remains until he showed up and he saved the day because he's the one who recognized her. Which we also know isn't true. The official police reports say that they identified her from her fingerprints, not from him coming in and asking to see her. On top of that, Tom was legally listed as Alexis's next of kin.

Meaning, when her body was found, Tom was the one who had to sign the paperwork and give the morgue permission to release her body and have it sent to whichever funeral home was going to handle the service and the burial. But Tom didn't do any of that.

When Alexis's mom, Stacey, learned that her daughter had in fact been found dead, she immediately went into planning mode. And sometimes when you can't deal with huge, terrible news and you need time to process it, sometimes it's easier to throw yourself into something and plan something. So in Stacey's case, that meant that she wanted to plan a funeral.

And she wanted to plan this funeral in Pennsylvania, where Alexis had been born. It's where she grew up, it's where she went to high school, it's also where she went to college. Alexis hadn't been living in Houston for very long, and her oldest friends and family were all out of state. Except when Stacey asked Tom to sign the paperwork and have Alexis' remains sent to Pennsylvania, he said that he would, and he just never did.

He didn't announce that he had changed his mind or ever say, oh, sorry, I forgot. I'm just really busy. I'm grieving. I'm doing my best. None of that. It was basically like that conversation with Stacey never even happened. He didn't lift a finger to help move the process along or get Alexis's body released. So Alexis's body sat in a morgue without a burial, without being able to be put to rest for two weeks.

And during that time, her mother, Stacey, didn't even get to come in and see Alexis's remains for herself, which I cannot even imagine. Because it's my belief that you would receive so much closure just by seeing somebody you love and knowing that their death is real and getting to say goodbye.

But Stacey wasn't even allowed to have that because Tom apparently just couldn't be bothered. In fact, the only way that Stacey was able to get the ball rolling on this funeral and see her own daughter was by advocating and campaigning. She finally got the paperwork updated so that she could be listed as the next of kin, as far as the body was concerned. The morgue really worked with her on this because it was so obvious that Tom was dragging his feet.

Everybody was sick of waiting for him to just like get it together and to start doing things, so they just let Stacey step in and take over. And in addition to not even letting Alexis's family have Alexis's body and not letting them have this funeral and grieve in a normal way, Tom was also withholding a bunch of Alexis's personal things.

Her family wanted little tokens of things of hers to remember her by, and I think we all have little knickknacks and things we keep from people who are now no longer with us. I know I have things for my grandmother, and I'm sure other people have things as well. So it's not even about having anything that is very valuable in terms of money, it's just something sentimental, whether it's a

ring or a piece of jewelry, a piece of clothing, a sweater, something like that. But Tom wasn't helping them have this. Not at all. Not long after Alexis's murder, he ended up moving away from Houston, which I'm going to put a pin in that because I'm going to come back to that later, but I want to make this point first.

After Tom left, rather than pass a key along to Stacey or tell her and her friends that they could take whatever they wanted, take whatever's going to help you grieve and heal and mourn, or just even leave the stuff in that apartment to go through later, he had a couple of his friends come to the apartment and completely empty it out.

which literally, it is just so beyond cruel to do that. He knew how important all of these personal effects were to her mother, Stacey. She wanted to have something of Alexis's, and it would have cost him absolutely nothing to just let her come and choose from Alexis's things, not literally get rid of everything. But instead, he went to all of these extra steps, extra effort to ensure that all of Alexis's possessions, all of her that was left in this world, ended up in

in the trash. Which isn't just an F you to her family and her friends, but also a huge F you to his wife. He also allegedly got rid of Alexis's cats. Her cats. She had three cats named Asia, Jack, and Smokey. And like I said, she loved these cats. Remember I mentioned she even made a whole separate Instagram account for these cats where she would post photos and she just babied them so much? She doted on them completely.

And Alexis's mom wanted to take these cats in. She wanted to take care of them. She knew how important these cats were to her daughter. But when Stacey asked where these cats were, Tom wouldn't tell her. They weren't at the apartment, and I don't know if he just dumped them on the street, or maybe gave them away to somebody else, or what, but he didn't have them, and he didn't tell her where they were, which is just so vile and so cruel.

Her family now was left with basically nothing to remember her by. Nothing tangible, that is. I'm not even going to pretend to understand how somebody like Tom thinks, but based on what he was doing that seemed so callous in regards to her friends and family, and then based on his Facebook posts and him trying to say that he was the savior, the martyr, the one who always helped Alexis and how she was so troubled...

It seems like on some level he wanted people to think that he wasn't involved in Alexis' death and that he was a victim in all of this. And I don't just mean in terms of trying to convince the police that so that he wouldn't go to prison, I think that Tom actually did care about how people in the general public saw him too. And I'm basing this on the fact that he gave some statements to the press where he said that he was fully cooperating with the police.

He wanted Alexis's murder to be solved, and he said he was going to do whatever he could to make sure that that happened, which, for the record, was a complete lie. If anything, he was getting in the way, and he was making this investigation take more time. So much so that it ended up ultimately impacting whether or not Alexis ever would receive justice. The police didn't talk about a lot of the investigation at the time, and that is pretty typical. They didn't want to tip their hands too much.

But later on, they did say that Tom was not cooperating at all. Apparently, he gave a bunch of statements to the police that they knew were lies, and it was very easy to disprove them. He told the police that there were no problems in their marriage, that everything was great, even though the investigators knew at this point that Alexis had wanted a divorce. He

He also couldn't seem to make up his mind about whether or not they had a fight before she left at the end of the dinner on Black Friday, or if everything was great and they got along perfectly. He went back and forth between saying both things to the police. Tom also named a bunch of other people who, according to him, were all very suspicious.

Now, since the police generally have to investigate any tip that they receive, no matter how out there it is, they wasted no time looking into all of these people that Tom had mentioned. But it was all just a wild goose chase. All of these other people were cleared, and it makes me feel like this was just more of Tom lying, trying to make himself look innocent, but really doing a terrible job at it. And other times, he would just flat out refuse to answer certain questions.

One official document described him as, quote, evasive. He would agree to interrogations, then he would skip them, and he generally just made it very difficult for the police to get anything out of him. And now I'm going to go back to something that I touched on earlier, which is that Tom left Houston right after Alexis was found dead.

And in case you haven't already guessed it by now, this wasn't one of those cases where he was just so sad and he was grieving that he needed to get up, get away from it all, and have a fresh start. No, no, no. He skipped town. He went to Georgia. He left just two weeks after the murder investigation began. So we're talking now probably late 2020 or around then. And it took until the following year, in August of 2021, for the police to even figure out where he was.

He didn't tell anybody where he was going, which, I'm sorry, if you're a grieving husband and you're trying to find out who murdered your wife and left her naked for dead and just lying there like a piece of garbage on the side of the freeway, you're not going to even tell the police where you're relocating to in case they have questions, in case they need help with the investigation?

Mmm, it doesn't sit right. So they finally found out where he was, and some Georgia-area police went up to Tom, and they basically said, "'Hey, we still have a lot of questions about your wife's death, so can you please come to the station and answer them?' And once again, Tom acted so helpful."

When the police ended up asking him why he skipped town, he said it had nothing to do with any sort of guilty feelings or being worried that he was going to be arrested. He said it was more so that Alexis's murder had been such big news and so many people had been assuming that he did it. So all of these accusations and allegations were flying around on the internet, and it made him feel very uncomfortable and very unwelcome in Houston. That's why he left, not because he had anything to do with it.

According to Tom, he had no choice but to leave Houston. He was feeling harassed. He was feeling like people were blaming him for something that he just did not do. So then he agreed to do an interrogation, and he set up a specific time and day where he was going to come into the station and he was going to give his statements.

He also said he would give the police a DNA sample. He would do it at the time of the interrogation. He would help in any way possible. He just wanted to clear his name. He wanted to be ruled out, and he wanted to find out who truly did this because it wasn't him. But then he blew off that appointment. And not only did he blow off the appointment, he fled the state again. This time, he moved to Florida. I mean, it was just red flag after red flag.

Ultimately, some U.S. Marshals tracked him down to an address in Fort Myers. They shared this information with a Texas-based division and also the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Task Force in Houston. So once they did that, they filed a warrant for his arrest. And on Wednesday, October 6th, 2021, a little under a year from when Alexis was murdered, they were all ready to bring Tom in.

The U.S. Marshals went to his house, or more accurately, his daughter's house, because he was crashing with her and her boyfriend at the time, and the Marshals started banging on the door. The daughter and the boyfriend came out of the house, but Tom didn't. Now, I find this next part kind of hard to wrap my mind around, but people will always find a way to surprise you, I guess. But the daughter and the boyfriend, they had no idea whatsoever that Tom was literally wanted for murder at this point.

And like I said before, the police weren't exactly advertising that he was their top and only suspect at this point, and Tom, of course, wasn't going to just announce that to his family either. But the point is that when the U.S. Marshals showed up to arrest Tom, it was a complete shock to the daughter and the boyfriend.

They hadn't done anything wrong. They didn't know what was going on. So the police kind of just like shooed them out of the way so that they would not be in any danger if the arrest now somehow went wrong. And their main priority was finding Tom, arresting him. Now, somewhere along the way, the daughter or the boyfriend mentioned to the police like, hey, by the way, Tom died.

Has guns. He has guns in there. So the marshals were being very careful. They did not want to get into a shootout. They didn't want anybody else injured in this process. They just wanted to arrest him. So when Tom saw that they were there, he turned around and he went upstairs. He went further into the house.

Now, since they didn't want to escalate the situation, the marshals stayed downstairs. They sort of waited for him to surrender. They waited for him to come out. They knew he couldn't stay upstairs forever. But he did stay away for a really long time. Long enough that it had the officers feeling a little bit nervous. It was around 10 p.m. when they first showed up to the house. But now it was almost midnight. And

and one of them decided to go inside and check on him. And when they did, they found that Tom had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Now, my assumption is that they must have heard the gunshot when he did it, and that's what prompted them to go inside at that time rather than stick it out longer and wait further. That's just my speculation. Nobody has said for sure if they heard the shot or not or why they decided to go in around midnight.

But they went in, and they found him. And that was that. It was case closed in about the worst possible way possible. There was never any conviction. There was no day in court for Alexis, no justice for her, no justice for her family. And I guess, if anything, if there is any silver lining here, it's that Tom didn't get away totally scot-free, but he also never had to spend a single day in prison.

My name is Michael Burrow. I am a sergeant with the HPD Homicide Division and I'm here to provide you guys with an update on the investigation into the murder of Alexis Rovenald Sharkey from last year. The investigation determined that Thomas Sharkey, her husband,

is the only person who had the means, motive and opportunity to have committed the murder. I would like to emphasize that this has been a very tragic series of events for both families, the Robonauts and the Sharkey's. They've been through hell essentially with the attention of the public on this case. I want to put out there that no one else is suspected of any involvement in the case and no one else is under investigation in the case. We have clear evidence that Mr. Sharkey acted alone.

Both families are composed of innocent people who've been through a lot and are in pain, especially the Sharkey's right now, his family. I would ask that people give both families their privacy and space to grieve. The family of Mr. Sharkey did not know that he was wanted in the case at the time as we were able to keep the warrant secret. Mr. Sharkey also did not know that he was wanted until last night when he was confronted by law enforcement.

I think it's really interesting how Alexis' family reacted to the news of Tom's suicide. They weren't like, oh good, at least he's dead or anything like that. But instead, they thought that it was a tragedy that he lost his life this way. Alexis' mom, Stacey, actually even did an interview where she had this to say about Tom. I'm super sorry for Tom's family. It's just such senseless loss that it's happened.

um, with my daughter and then him. I'm just sorry for all of that. It's just beyond. It's been a horrific year. Loss of life is not, it's never good. Um, but I do feel like in a way he did serve himself justice. Are you surprised that he ended his life? Yes, I am. I just really thought that, um, it would end with a trial and that he would come in and, um,

make his case. And he chose to not go that way. Well, I will admit that we have felt that Tom

was guilty of this from pretty much the beginning. I have to say, I don't know if I would be nearly that calm or level-headed if someone actually took the life of one of my children and then killed themselves as well. I'm honestly so impressed by what a true class act Stacey is, honestly, through and through. I mean, to just be so patient through all of this devastation and then for everything to end up how it did...

It is heartbreaking. But Alexis's friends don't want what happened to Alexis to ruin her memory either. They've all gotten together like the time they did a candlelight balloon release, but it's been hard. Love you! Love you!

Where'd they all go? I never really got a chance to communicate with them a whole bunch. I did communicate with her mom a little bit. But in that time, we just wanted to be so supportive to her family. And, you know, we just asked for advice beforehand that we talk to media and her mom is seriously one of the sweetest people. It's truly devastating what happened to them. And I will...

forever feel so sorry for what happened. With Lexi passing and what we experienced from the media and Reddit groups, it kind of tore all of us apart. We are all like individually still friends. Like we all communicate with each other. I would say that I'm the closest to Kendra still. She's like an older sister to me. We all still talk to each other, but ultimately,

It tore us apart and it's so sad. And I mean, it makes sense, right? Like to go something very traumatic like that. Like they even say that in a marriage when something happens like this, like it splits the couple apart.

So, yeah, we all have kind of like separated in our own ways. And, you know, it makes me just believe that Lexi was like truly the backbone of our entire friend group. There was such a void without her being there. And I think it was just it was just like an irky feeling.

that she was no longer there and it was so hard we we didn't go to her funeral um it's yeah it just feels like something that has not been able to be processed at all yeah you know like I want her story to be heard she was just such like an amazing friend an amazing person and I

I want people to shed light on the type of person that she was and for people to know that she was so happy and what happened to her was devastating. But I don't think that she would want people to remember her by what happened to her. So I just want people to understand that like she was such a loving person. And yeah, I just it's hard to talk about her.

But I mean, they're like, if I can go back a little bit, I see her places. Some of the girls went and got ladybug tattoos and they called her lady. And on my 30th birthday, which is like a huge milestone, my parents got me a hotel room and it was like up on the 20th floor.

And my parents, like they decorated the room for me. They went all out and I was walking by looking at everything. And there was just this ladybug sitting on the window and I knew it was her. And it was just the craziest thing. Like a ladybug, 20 floors up, like in a hotel, like it was just absolutely insane. It was just sitting there and it sat there for like 30 minutes. Um, and that just speaks for the type of person she is. And that's what I want people to remember her as.

Vi is, she is such a free spirit and she was so giving and so caring. Don't remember her by what happened to her. Remember her by the love that she showed and the compassion she showed to others. I just would like to give some advice to other women out there who are probably listening to this or have experienced abuse in a relationship.

it starts with mental abuse and then it goes into verbal abuse and then it gets into physical. I have dealt with it in my own life after all of this happened. And even witnessing what happens to Lexi, I still made excuses for a person.

And ladies, just please, if there is being mental abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, please just seek out help and lead the situation. It only gets worse and bitterness and jealousy grows from that. And sometimes people, you don't think that they would hurt you, but it's just one time, one instance where someone can snap and it's over. And that is another reminder of why Alexis deserves to have her entire story told.

Like I said, I did do some short updates back when this was all breaking a few years ago, but I wanted there to be one place, a dedicated place where we could cover each development, where we could dive in deep and get the full story told. And I did it here on the podcast because some of these developments were so awful and I wanted to speak freely without having to censor myself the way that I do over on YouTube. I believe that anytime we dilute what a victim experienced or what a survivor experienced,

you're diminishing what they went through. You should at least, at the very bare minimum, be able to use the legal terminology for what their perpetrator did to them. By diluting it, it's almost as though you dilute the seriousness of it. And I believe that her story needs to be shared. It needs to be told, if not...

only for the sole purpose of having her voice continue on, but also to raise awareness for anybody else who finds themselves in a relationship that has similar red flags or similarities with control and all of the different things that Alexis was struggling with in her relationship with Tom. If it helps or saves even just one person, that is enough.

So I really appreciate you guys tuning in today and hearing Alexis's story. I appreciate you lifting her story up and helping raise awareness. And I also want to just publicly thank Chelsea for being so brave to speak up and share all of her incredible insights and past experiences and memories of her and her best friend. Thank you guys again for tuning in, and until the next one, please stay safe. Bye.