On November 28, 2020, the body of Alexis Sharkey, a Texas-based online influencer, was discovered on the side of a Houston road. She was found only a few miles from the home she shared with her husband, Tom Sharkey. Her death was ruled a homicide, and the cause of death was strangulation. Still, no arrests have been made, begging the question: Who Killed Alexis Sharkey?

Alexis Robinault was born on January 25, 1994 in northwestern Pennsylvania. She lived with her parents and two sisters and is said to have been very close to her family. After graduating high school in 2012, Alexis attended the University of Pittsburgh, where she majored in Biology, Nutrition and Psychology. She aspired to have a career in medicine, but decided to take a year off after college and moved to Odessa, Texas.

She got a job at Twin Peaks, a bar/restaurant known for hiring beautiful female servers. It was there that she met regular customer, Tom Sharkey, and the two fell in love. Despite the almost twenty-year age gap, Alexis and Tom decided to marry in December 2019 and moved to Houston, documenting their relationship and travels on social media. Once Alexis began to acquire more of an online following, she realized the potential sales she could make as a multi-level-marketer selling Monat hair products. Her model-like looks and the way she used her education in biology to explain the science behind the products she sold made her a natural success. By early 2020, she had become an Executive Director.

Holiday Blues

Although Alexis often shared #couplegoals photos of her and Tom, friends said she rarely ever brought him to events, much less talked about him at all. In early November 2020, Alexis went on a trip to Tulum with friends. Tom was not present.

When she returned, she spoke with her mother about her Thanksgiving plans. She would not be going home to see her family, and had not visited them in over a year, which was unlike her. She would not spend Thanksgiving with her husband, either. Instead, she went to her friend Tanya’s house to celebrate with girlfriends. At about 12AM, Alexis left the Thanksgiving party and headed to a bar with another friend, where she stayed until about 3AM.

Black Friday 2020

The next day, Alexis’s Monat network was busy sharing their Black Friday deals on Instagram and TikTok. Absent from the flurry of posts was any word from Alexis. This was concerning to some of her friends, as Alexis was typically very active online and encouraged her Monat team to use social media to make sales. At 5:30pm that evening, the group received a text message from Alexis asking if anyone wanted to go out that night. They declined, but made plans for a girls night the following evening. That was the last time anyone would ever hear from Alexis Sharkey.

Around 11PM that evening, John, the boyfriend of one of Alexis’s friends, texted Tom to ask if he had seen her. Tom said Alexis was missing and that she had stormed out of the house earlier without shoes and entered a black car. According to Medium, Tom’s story would later change several times:

At some point, he told police that Alexis was wearing sweats and running shoes when she left the house. In one version, he said she left her phone behind, and in another, he said she took it with her and he used an app to track her down. He had followed her around in a black car until he eventually lost signal.

John stated that he felt like something didn’t feel right about the conversation with Tom.

From Missing to Murder

The following day, Alexis’s friends began texting in their group chat about the plans they made that evening. Alexis never responded, and when she didn’t show up to the movie date, they knew something was seriously wrong. They called police to file a missing person’s report and began posting about Alexis on social media.

Not long after Alexis’s friends began looking for her, her naked body had been found on the side of a service road by Houston city workers. Tom was called in to identify the body and confirmed that the deceased was Alexis. Initially, here was no apparent cause of death. It wouldn’t be until January 2021, two months after Alexis died, that an autopsy ruled that Alexis had died by strangulation.

Happily Ever After?

After Alexis was murdered, more details came to light about her relationship with Tom. One of Alexis’s friends said that Alexis had recently confided in her about her failing marriage. She had divorce papers drawn up, and she and Tom had separated their joint back account just before she went missing. She reportedly also told the friend that she was “petrified” for her life, which made her question if Tom was the person who killed Alexis Sharkey.

It was also revealed that while in Tulum, Mexico, Alexis spent time with a Houston DJ. Some of her friends suggest that the pair had a relationship, and that he was the one who picked her up to go to the bar after the Thanskgiving gathering. Whether or not the two were actually seeing each other, or if Tom knew about the man, remains unconfirmed.

Currently, police are mum about any suspicions they have about who killed Alexis Sharkey. Based on the details of the case, it is likely that Tom Sharkey is their prime suspect, but we won’t know until an arrest is made. A Reddit thread dedicated to solving the case has more than 2,000 members and counting. Hopefully, 2021 will bring justice for Alexis Sharkey and her friends and family.