“always on my story,” Alexis Sharkey promised in her Instagram bio.
The 26-year-old beauty and lifestyle enthusiast—who gave her job description as “Mentor”—made a name for herself amid a sea of personalities angling for their own slice of the social media pie with pure hustle, and that included posting regularly to her Instagram Story, lest any of her 20,000-plus followers (a number that has more than tripled in the past two weeks) miss an update.
“She is attached to her phone,” Tanya Ricardo, a close friend who said she spent Thanksgiving with Alexis, told KHOU-11 on Nov. 30. “She is a social media queen. She is an influencer. She works from her phone.”
So when 12 hours went by after Tanya last talked to Alexis at around 6 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 27, to confirm a movie get-together for the 28th, and her friend hadn’t posted anything new, and she wasn’t responding to texts or calls, loved ones started to worry. Tanya went to the apartment Alexis shared with her husband, Tom Sharkey, 49, and knocked on the door. No one answered, after which Tanya called police and a missing persons report was filed that Saturday afternoon.
Meanwhile, earlier that morning a city sanitation worker driving along Red Haw Lane, near Houston’s North Eldridge Parkway, had spotted what turned out to be Alexis’ naked body lying in some bushes by the side of the road, about three miles from her home.
