Original subtitles

REPORTER: Houston Police have learned the identity

of a deceased female found at 1000 Red Haw Lane.

WOMAN: The naked body was discovered by the roadside.

Ms Sharkey was killed on the night of November 27th.

Her body was found the following morning.

We knew it was her... SHE CRIES

..and everything shatters.

People across the country want answers in the sudden death

of a popular social media influencer.

This video's for people like me.

It was a shocking mystery from the get-go.

She was dumped on the side of the road naked

like she didn't matter.

What happened to Alexis Sharkey?

It got very viral very, very quick.

Guys, this case is still developing. It just happened a few days ago.

WOMAN: 'I don't know if they all killed her,

'or something happened, and they've just covered it up.'

It was actually overwhelming.

People wanted a simple answer, which was who murdered her?

My gut was screaming, "Tom did this."

MAN:

I get a text from a friend

asking if I had heard from Lex.

DEVIN: She's not answering everybody's phone calls, texts.

For Lex to not have been

on social media, like,

all of the 27th,

you know, was really weird.

MIKE: I remember looking at my phone,

and it was a Houston number.

It was one of her friends telling me something's wrong.

They can't get a hold of Lexi.

STACEY: Tom called us, "Have you seen Lexi?"

I'm like, "What do you mean, 'have I seen Lexi?' "

He was upset, he couldn't find her, didn't know where she was.

We went into complete panic mode. SHE CRIES

She never just disappears.

We're texting her. "Lexi, please call. Lexi, please call."

Nothing. "Lexi, please call."

I was texting her that over and over. "Lexi, please call."

I was just going straight to voice mail,

so...

it was terrifying

not being able to get a hold of her

and just imagining

the absolute worst-case scenario.

I'm just texting her, "Please, please answer."

Like, "If you're hiding out, please, send us a sign."

Anything, some reply, a reaction, something.

We're a 24-hour drive from where she was,

and so we don't... we didn't know what was happening.

We filed the police report. She's a missing person.

If you have any information,

please call the Houston Police Department.

Cos it's never her, and, erm... so I knew she was missing

It wasn't on her own will.

I knew it.

And I just started... I just started wailing.

REPORTER: Social media influencer Alexis Sharkey

has been reported missing in Houston.

REPORTER: The 26-year-old from Youngsville, Pennsylvania,

moved to the city earlier this year.

STACEY: There I am with her.

There she is, pretty fragile.

You are my precious, fragile bundle.

Mm. Look at her.

Three and a half weeks early.

Wow. She was a tiny little thing. She was so teeny.

Look how young you look. Oh, my gosh!

I know. Wow.

Hm. I look like a dork.

SHE LAUGHS

Those were the style at the time. I know, man.

Mm.

You can't ever take enough pictures of your first baby, I swear. No.

SHE LAUGHS Look at your face.

She was loving and precious from the beginning.

When she was born, man, I was just like, "Wow."

I was so unprepared for it, and, erm...

changing the diapers, I didn't...

I was just, "Oh, OK, you want me to do what?"

HE LAUGHS

She was premature.

She was, like, 4lb 9oz when I brought her home,

and it was a fight.

We looked up the name "Alexis",

and it meant "defender", "strength", and we're like, "Yeah",

which was perfect because she fought

to survive and to grow.

You all of a sudden find out what love is

when you have a child, like none other.

Yeah.

Youngsville - if you like to live in a small town,

it was a great place to raise kids.

Having an older sister was fantastic.

She was my best friend. She was right there.

We were running around town.

Here are the two girls. On the trampoline.

Getting into all kinds of shenanigans.

The kayak is clean, Alexis Robinault?

It was this wonderful family community in that aspect.

I've just always loved Lexi.

She's... She was like my sister, honestly.

She was goofy. HE LAUGHS

Especially when she was younger,

she had little round glasses that were a little dorky.

'We all did things together. We camped together.

'We boated together. We would go on vacations together.'

Very good.

Once you, I guess, have that many memories of someone,

you just think, like, "Man, how is the future gonna be?"

You know, unfortunately, that's not gonna happen.

REPORTER: The mother of Alexis Sharkey

has appealed for information about her missing daughter.

REPORTER 2: The Houston influencer has not been seen since Friday.

I went ahead and did a post that we're searching for her.

We all started sharing it around, and, I mean,

it got very viral very, very quick.

Alexis Sharkey, she's an Instagram influencer.

She does beauty tips, health tutorials.

All her friends were posting things about her being missing.

Guys, this case is still developing. It just happened a few days ago.

You have the online detectives

on TikTok.

They're getting deeper into the mystery.

They're getting deeper into knowing Alexis,

what they think they know about her.

Her picture was being shared

across all these different platforms.

I mean, it was just... it was actually overwhelming.

We'll see where this case goes.

We are learning more about the life

of social media influencer Alexis Sharkey.

Before moving to Houston, Alexis lived in Odessa, Texas.

She wanted to be in medicine, um, in some way or another,

and she got her degree in biology.

So when she went to Texas,

I just felt like she was selling herself short.

That point, she was just trying to pay everything off.

I first realised she worked at Twin Peaks

when she texted me one day.

I thoroughly believe she bought a child-size plaid shirt

and cut off the sleeves

and tied it super tight right below the boobs,

and then there was essentially underwear that were just hot shorts.

STACEY: Oh, I wasn't excited about Twin Peaks.

You have so much more to offer, Alexis.

You have so much more to offer than that.

It's turning into a bar-hopping day.

Day drinking.

Day drinking - that's how today's going.

Alexis met Tom at Twin Peaks.

He was becoming a regular,

and he was hanging out at the bar and talking to her all the time.

For months, she didn't tell me about it.

Tom was 23 years older than Lexi,

only a few years younger than my dad,

and I found that really odd.

When she brought Tom home, it was for my 50th birthday.

Lexi warned me.

She's like, "Just so you know, you know,

"I don't wanna freak you out, but he's a little bit older."

We wanted to see what kind of guy he was.

He was one big man,

seemed to really adore her, really did.

I would 100% describe Tom's behaviour

in pretty much every way as controlling.

That didn't sit quite right with me.

TOM SHARKEY:

When he says it, he means it.

He had rules for her.

TOM SHARKEY:

What happened to Alexis Sharkey?

Tonight, that is still the question

so many of her friends and family are asking.

REPORTER: Houston Police say Sharkey was last seen Friday

at her apartment complex.

Houston's a concrete jungle, a very big city.

There's a lot of stories to be told.

Alexis Sharkey's story stands out because...

not just was it a mystery unfolding in real time

but because so many people online, not just in this city

but across the country, even the world, really,

were all focused on her and really felt close to her

because of all the videos that they saw on TikTok.

The news stations in town

first heard about this woman's disappearance

not from her husband,

but from her mother, who lives way out of state.

'She was a beautiful, fun ray of light to be around,

'and I... and I can't understand it.'

Sat up all night, and we just were on our phones,

and I was grateful for how it spread

because that meant more people had their eyes out.

We start digging deep into who Alexis Sharkey is.

So we realised she has a huge presence on social media.

She's being followed by thousands of people,

and people wanted a simple answer, which was what happened to her?

The first time I met Lexi, we were in Vegas for a work trip.

We clicked immediately.

We got to go to the pool parties,

and our company would host, you know, cocktail parties.

We did so many different trips all over the place.

I'm going to do an oil treatment today.

We were marketing and selling different hair care

and skin care beauty products.

Creases. Look at this line.

But once videos were able to come into play,

it just started sky rocketing from there.

Hi, guys.

It's me, and I'm standing up today because...

so excited about this topic.

This video's for people like me.

She was just so ahead of the game.

If you would like more information on getting a hold of these products,

and you're sold now, talk to you soon.

When you look at Lexi's videos,

you get the sense of her personality.

It's always super goofy or silly.

TIKTOK VOICE: You just lip sync to things,

and you just watch them do that?

Where's the talent?

This is such a great lightweight shirt.

Lexi did brand work for other companies, too.

Next are these babies, and... SHE EXHALES

..they're seriously just so fricking cute.

And Lexi made a very, very good income

with what she was doing.

It was a great time for Lexi.

Tom made sure she had every meal cooked for her,

everything was clean, she didn't do laundry.

Like, you would think, "That's amazing."

Like, "He's being super supportive and loving."

TOM SHARKEY:

It came to the point where

it was almost overwhelming and overbearing.

When you know him, and you're around him,

you realise that you're doing it to almost make her,

erm... confidence within herself diminish.

I could definitely call it love bombing, 100%.

The major red flag in their relationship that I saw

is that we went out to the one restaurant,

and Tom completely lost his cool

over something that was completely ridiculous.

He walked home that night and slept in his truck

instead of coming inside.

And I just remember Lexi driving me back to the apartment in tears

and just being like, "Just don't tell Mom.

"Just don't tell Mom and Dad. Like, everything's fine.

"Like, he gets like this sometimes. It's fine".

When I was hugging her at the airport to leave,

she definitely clung on to me in that hug

tighter than she has ever hugged me.

It definitely made leaving hard.

One time when they came home,

I remember Tom telling me that he wanted to marry her,

and they showed me the ring, and I was just like, "Oh!"

I'm like, "If you're gonna suddenly jump into a marriage like this,

"well, was that your idea or his?"

He had kids, like, my age.

I'm like, "Well, he's had an ex-wife, he has his kids.

"What's going on there?"

I'm getting married in Vegas. But, anyways, it doesn't matter.

They ended up eloping, just getting married on their own,

and, er, they said, "Well, we went and got married".

I was like, "Oh, OK".

It felt so off.

Like, I can't describe, like, just how weird it made me feel.

Like, this weird... this chill came up my spine,

and I'm like, "I don't love this.

"I love her. I don't love this for her".

And that's when they came to Houston, was right after that.

When Lexi first moved to Houston, I was really excited.

"Ah, you know, we're just gonna have so much fun."

It was a nice apartment.

Hi, Tom. ALLY GIGGLES

'They had a wine fridge, which I know we both personally loved.'

I definitely prefer rose. ALLY LAUGHS

We were in her pool, like, five days a week.

It's only two seconds. Oh!

'We would go to happy hours.

'Lexi loved it here.' ALLY CHUCKLES

Ye-haw!

But also, what I started noticing after she moved to Houston,

she would almost get standoffish any time Tom was around.

So that, fun, bubbly personality that would you see,

it was now shadowed by a different type of aura.

STEVE: It's out of character of Alexis

not to post on social media.

She posted all the time.

When we looked at her TikTok,

there was also videos with her and her husband on.

When we reached out to Tom,

it didn't seem like he wanted us to cover his wife's disappearance,

which is strange.

When somebody goes missing,

if you love them you, wanna find them.

TOM SHARKEY:

I texted Lexi, and she said that she needs to get out of the house.

That was the first time that she had reached out to anybody

about things not being good at home.

I believe that Tom was getting jealous of Lexi and her success

as she was getting more popular and gaining more followers.

There were tensions,

when she was the breadwinner in their relationship.

How can that make your ego feel? I can only imagine.

He would harass her for hours

about how she was probably cheating on him,

how she was staring at every guy in the bar

and not paying attention to him.

Once the emotional abuse started,

we definitely were trying to get her to question,

"Is this a healthy relationship?"

Something was off.

TOM SHARKEY:

WOMAN:

Tom called one of the girls shortly after,

just frantic and in a panic.

TOM SHARKEY:

I was just hoping that she ran away cos she had had enough.

That's what I was hoping, but then I saw the news article.

REPORTER: A city worker found the body

on the roadside in West Houston.

VOICE BREAKING: You wanna hope for the best,

and you wanna really hope that it's not what you think it is.

A city worker found the body of Alexis Sharkey

on the side of the road in West Houston over the weekend.

There was no physical marks on the body

that would indicate how this person died.

There was kind of a mystique, a mystery

behind how that woman got there.

I just thought, "No".

You know?

It was four miles away from where she lived.

We just starting calling the forensic centre

where the body had been taken to.

And we were just begging them, you know.

We started doing the whole, you know,

"What colour is her hair, does she have tattoos?"

I asked the person at the morgue, I asked,

"Is there a, er, tattoo of a continent on her hip?"

And they said "yes".

And then I just broke down and cried.

We knew it was her.

And everything shatters.

TOBI: She didn't even get through the words

of, "her body's been found."

I heard... Sorry.

I heard my mom just say "her body"

and I was wailing.

HE SOBS

Such a...

..sweet and beautiful girl.

It's actually happening, it's...

Like, she's not coming back. She's never gonna be here again.

Like, she's gone.

She was dumped on the side of the road naked and, erm...

Just like an animal.

Just discarded like she didn't matter.

And a part of you dies.

A part of you dies.

Worst day of your life.

Losing a child is the worst thing to happen to a human being.

Ever.

NEWSREADER: The female has been identified as Alexis Sharkey.

Anyone with information on this case

is urged to contact Houston Police Department Homicide Division.

The only information we got on the record

from the Houston Police Department was the day the body was found.

After that, police were silent.

How tight-lipped they were was unusual.

It just deepens that mystery about what happened.

In a case where police

have no idea who the killer is,

they're more willing to do press conferences,

talk to reporters.

In this case, police were low-key.

That tells me they kind of know who the killer is.

TOM SHARKEY:

My friend and I got a phone call from Tom.

We decided that we're gonna record this.

It's him trying to explain to us what happened.

They got into an argument and she left the apartment

and ends up being missing.

TOM SHARKEY:

ALLY:

TOM SHARKEY:

ALLY:

TOM SHARKEY:

The last time he saw her was she was trying to get into a car...

INHALES ..to drive away.

TOM SHARKEY:

He's putting on an act.

After this call happened, I emailed photos and screenshots

and both recordings to the police.

Hey, guys, we're covering the mysterious death

of Instagram influencer Alexis Robinault Sharkey,

found dead and naked on the roadside.

Her friends were very quickly suspicious of her husband.

They'd been married less than a year

and things were already not going well.

It was important to let the media know

more about what was going on in the relationship without overstepping

because of how it was portrayed.

How Lexi put it out there that

from what you saw, they were in a perfect marriage.

Alexis' friends were telling us that she confided in them

that she was fearful of her husband Tom.

But on social media, the viewers were definitely talking about him.

Her husband has come out.

He's said that he's cooperating with the police

and that this is farthest from the truth.

Tom and Alexis had only been married for a year.

And he said that him and Alexis was good.

You have the online detectives on TikTok

speculating that Tom's to blame for his wife's murder.

Why and how I believe Tom killed Alexis.

I remember calling Tom several times.

He finally answered.

Tom told us in the interview the online detectives were trolling him.

He painted a picture that what we saw on social media,

what you saw on TikTok was not truly who she was.

And he was saying it in a very non-coherent way.

He claimed he had nothing to do with her body being found.

That he was innocent. And ended the conversation.

You're on the phone not trying to find answers,

not demanding justice,

not saying, "We've got a killer on the loose,

"we've gotta find the killer".

And that was bizarre.

The video on Halloween is part of the facade,

it's a part of the image that she was trying to still portray,

even though everything behind the scenes was just falling apart.

Our friends were having a party.

Lexi was talking to somebody

and Tom got mad and threatened to fight him.

This was the first time that people who didn't know them

and know that things weren't going well,

they got a first-hand look of, "Whoa, this is how you really are,

"you actually have a temper,

"and you don't know how to control it."

It is safe to say

that when you see the kiss at the end of the video,

it's again part of the image, they're married,

but she wasn't happy.

This location, about four minutes from Alexis' home.

She had recently decided to get divorced, according to her friend,

and she was, you know, going through some tough times.

She texted me.

She was filing for a divorce. She was getting separated.

She was terrified. She was sad.

She wasn't herself any more. She wanted out.

It's when a lot of women lose their lives, actually,

is when they try to get away

from their abusive partner,

that is the most dangerous time.

REPORTER: Sharkey moved with her husband from West Texas to Houston.

HPD says he's cooperating with the investigation.

They've been together for a couple of years

and, um, we've talked several times during this process.

We went to Houston.

We wanted to see her apartment.

We saw Tom.

Tom came and embraced Mike. Hugged him.

He kind of was in the middle of talking to us then he just left.

I never saw him again.

No-one was able to get a hold of Tom.

Not her friends, not her family. Nobody.

We reached out to Sharkey's husband tonight, but did not hear back.

The next big piece of this investigation

will be her cause of death.

We're still waiting on the medical examiner's autopsy.

This particular story stuck around.

Alexis already had a large following on social media.

Following her disappearance, those numbers sky rocketed.

The conspiracy theories spread so quickly.

All social media, people were talking about it

and coming up with their own idea of how she may have died.

There were a couple about how she was a high-end call girl

with her friends at the hotel near her house.

You don't really realise how dark it is

until you have something where people decide to put a focus on you.

You could just see the ugliness of people pointing fingers

and people blaming my wife and I

and people just, "Where was her dad at?"

The way her friends are outspoken on social media

just does not sit right with me.

And I don't know if they all killed her

or they killed her on accident

or something happened and they've just covered it up.

There was a lot of speculation that she had overdosed

and that was...

That was very frustrating to me and very angry

cos I knew that's not who my child was.

Sure enough, toxicology report comes back.

Not drugs.

There was nothing in her system whatsoever.

The mother of a popular social media influencer

is telling us she wants answers about what happened to her daughter.

There's so many cases that go unsolved.

And I could not bear to have my daughter's case unsolved.

We met the police and talked with them.

And so I knew that they were progressing.

Just takes longer than you expect.

It was interesting because in a lot of cases,

you get that cause of death relatively quickly.

And this particular case,

we didn't get it for almost two months,

and that was strange.

There are new developments

in the death of a popular social media blogger,

Alexis Sharkey.

An autopsy reveals she was strangled.

Everyone's fascinated with the cause of death because it tells you a lot,

and strangulation is personal.

Right? It feels intense.

That only gets people to ask, "Well, who strangled her?"

In my head, Tom.

And my gut was screaming Tom did this.

That's her showing us how to make a messy bun. Right.

That one went viral.

Yeah, it really did.

Like five million views.

I'd heard of TikToks and I... I knew it was a thing.

But I'd never looked at 'em.

STACEY LAUGHS That shows my age,

but yeah, I didn't even know she was on them.

I went, "Oh, my gosh I've gotta go look,

"I can see my daughter in, like, life. And in video."

This makes me see her, it makes me smile.

I feel like she had changed a lot.

It was nice to see her having fun

but, erm, you just see the highlights

and you really wonder what's really going on.

That was so good.

Excellent tacos. We'll be back.

Lex had always wanted to go to Marfa.

She thought it was so cool and like Lex,

it's a very creative and artsy town.

When we were in Marfa, she just breaks down out of nowhere.

She's on her phone scrolling and typing a million miles an hour.

Crying.

We find out Tom's basically questioning everything she's doing.

'It's a Lex!'

She posted a video of me jumping around on the bed

and I just remember her getting all these messages

about how, of course, you know, we're trashed and we're drunk,

and we're just being ridiculous and we can't even be controlled.

'What'd you get, Lex?

' "The hor Alexis." '

That was when she opened up

and she decided to tell us the truth behind the physical abuse.

And what she had been enduring over the last year, at least.

She said the words, "I live in fear".

She told us, "He gets so mad at me that he sees black.

"He... He is so enraged

"he will literally put his arm up against my neck

"and put me against the wall until I pass out".

And she said, "I literally pass out and wake up on the bathroom floor".

She said, "I've never told anybody this.

"Not my family, no-one knows,

"and I, er... More than anything, I would really appreciate

"if you guys would keep this to yourself".

You feel like you're a failure as a friend,

right?

We told her, "He's gonna snap.

You know, "He's gonna snap. He's going to go too far"."

That's where the guilt comes in

cos I feel, like, could have I prevented it?

She didn't say anything that gave us a red flag.

We really only saw each other during Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I'd had no reason to believe that she was not happy.

But the thing is, because you're not spending enough time together,

you're not seeing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

You're just seeing the good.

Alexis had a glamorous life on Instagram and TikTok

that many girls were probably envious of.

Little did they know she was in a controlling, abusive relationship.

And there wasn't a single warning sign on social media.

Tonight, a dramatic turn

in the murder of a Houston social media influencer.

Houston Police finally break their silence

almost a year after the body was found.

They say Tom Sharkey is their only suspect.

He left the state not long after the homicide and, er...

especially here recently, he...

Detectives made efforts to meet with him

in order to collect a DNA sample from him.

He agreed to do that and suddenly he, er, no showed,

dropped out of contact.

It's pretty wild to think that he agrees to meet with police,

sets up a meeting to share his DNA, but doesn't show up.

An arrest warrant was obtained for Thomas Sharkey

on September 29th, 2021.

Tom is a wanted man at this point. Wanted for his wife's murder.

US Marshals located Mr Sharkey

staying with a relative in Fort Myers

at approximately 10pm last night.

They move in to arrest him.

Mr Sharkey, er, avoided them, ran upstairs,

when he learned that the law enforcement was there for him.

And he took his own life using a firearm.

US Marshals were about to arrest the husband of Alexis Sharkey

at a home in Fort Myers, Florida, Tuesday,

when authorities say he took his own life.

He ran back into his daughter's apartment.

Ran into the closet and shot himself.

I felt robbed.

I felt very much cheated.

Tom taking his own life was cheating justice.

Part of me was glad that he did that

but I still have questions that I can't...

I'll never be able to answer.

I was so, so angry.

Like, "You are a coward."

REPORTER: Today, Houston police detectives explained

why they were hot on Thomas Sharkey's tail.

The investigation determined that Thomas Sharkey, her husband,

is the only person who had the means, motive,

and opportunity to have committed the murder.

We accept there was a history of domestic violence

and that the relationship was ending and there was a pending divorce.

REPORTER: Houston Police have revealed

the social media influencer's marriage

was far from picture perfect.

We know that Ms Sharkey was home throughout the day.

And, er, at their apartment.

And that Thomas came home, er, that evening...

..around 6.40pm.

And things, er, began from there.

I think, for Tom, he might have come home

when she maybe least expected it.

TOM SHARKEY:

We think that Tom was going through her messages.

A lot of us had the fear that that's what popped him off

and that's what made him so angry.

He would choke her and she'd wake up on the bathroom floor

but this time, she just didn't wake up.

I think her body was placed where it was

because...

..no traffic driving up and down that road, or very minimal.

No street lights, it's dark.

The way he left her was his way and form

of showing that he had control over her

until the bitter, bitter end, until the very end.

We have clear evidence that Mr Sharkey acted alone.

We went to the Houston City Police Department

and they showed us all the evidence, we went over all of it.

But then I asked the question, I said, "Is this case closed?"

And they said, "Yes".

Unbeknownst to any of us, Lexi had been recording her experiences.

The police shared those with us.

It hea... It broke my heart.

It broke my heart that she was living in the situation she was.

And she did not come to us about it.

As a mom, I see what she was going through

and the, the fear that she had and the pain that she was enduring.

VOICE BREAKS: We're sorry. Sorry I wasn't there.

Sorry I wasn't able to protect you.

I would tell her that she's still loved,

that anything that she was feeling before, like she couldn't say,

no-one would've judged her

and she would've had all the support...

VOICE BREAKS

Right now, I just wanna tell her I'm sorry.

I should've done more.

I should've done more.

Any time I see the water, any water,

it reminds me of her, cos she loved the water.

There's so many photos that we have of her when...

When she smiled, she had a big smile.

She just glowed. When she smiled, she meant it.

It was in her eyes.

She really knew how to live

and she embraced it with every ounce of her being.

She was really special. Hm.

I feel her, I talk to her. She's with us.

Love you, Lex, I miss you so much. STACEY CHUCKLES SOFTLY

I hope in people seeing her story,

that women who are encountering abuse

don't hesitate so much to get help.

She would be like, "Please live.

"Help other people.

"Don't let this happen to other people.

"Do good by me."

And that's what we wanna do.

All right, well, thanks for tuning in. Bye, guys!

Subtitles by accessibility@itv.com