Mother of deceased Instagram influencer Alexis Sharkey suspects murder
The mother of the Instagram influencer who was found dead in Houston on Sunday is convinced her daughter was murdered.
A maintenance worker found the naked body of Alexis Sharkey, 26, on Saturday, after her husband and friends reported her missing. Officials said her body had been left there overnight.
Stacey Clark Robinault, Sharkey’s mother, confirmed her daughter’s death Sunday on Facebook, close on the heels of her plea for information.
Instagram influencer Alexis Sharkey found dead in Houston
“We are completely wrecked,” Robinault told KPRC-TV on Monday. “The family is just so devastated — her cousins, her sisters, her 13-year-old sister. It’s just so difficult.”
This was “absolutely foul play,” she said unequivocally.
“There is nothing to me that suggests that this was an accident,” Robinault told KPRC from her home in western Pennsylvania, where Sharkey grew up, the eldest of three sisters. “And there’s nothing to me that suggests anything else, other than that this was done to her. And I believe that in my mother’s gut.”
Friends echoed that, given the way that Sharkey was found, they told local media. One friend of Sharkey’s said the influencer had feared for her life, confiding during a trip together that she was “petrified” and “scared for her life,” the friend told KTRK-TV. The friend did not say who Sharkey thought was after her, or why.
Sharkey had moved to Houston with her husband, Tom Sharkey, earlier this year. She grew up in Pennsylvania and was taking a year off after college before applying to medical school, her mother told KPRC.
“I do believe she was murdered,” Robinault told KTRK. “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. It’s not let me down.”
The family is shattered, and still awaiting answers as Sharkey’s cause of death was still pending on Tuesday.
“We’re very broken,” Robinault told KTRK. “We’re very brokenhearted. It’s just painful for someone so bright and having so much to offer ... just to be gone, to be snuffed out. I don’t know why. I don’t know why. The horrific nature of her last moments must’ve been ... I can’t even. I can’t even go there.”
Friends were equally shocked and devastated. Close friend Tanya Ricardo, who Sharkey spent Thanksgiving with, told KHOU-TV she knew something was amiss when her friend the “social media queen” went more than 12 hours without posting, and no one answered the door at the apartment she shared with her husband, 49. Sharkey had recently told her she was getting divorced.
Sharkey’s friends and family have sworn never to rest until they knew what had happened to her, especially in light of how she was found.
“I mean, just threw her on the side of the road, naked, like garbage. I just, I don’t get it,” Ricardo told KHOU. “No one gets away with something like this. No one.”
