Houston influencer Alexis Sharkey was found dead and naked on the side of the road. Here's how the case has unfolded.

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Houston influencer Alexis Sharkey was found dead and naked on the side of the road. Here's how the case has unfolded.
A 26-year-old influencer was found dead in Houston over the weekend.@AlexisSharkey/Instagram
  • Alexis Robinault, a Houston-based influencer also known as Alexis Sharkey, was found dead on the side of the road the weekend after Thanksgiving.
  • Police said that she was found with no clothing and no visible wounds.
  • Sharkey's mother previously told Insider that she believes that her daughter was murdered.
  • Houston police are currently awaiting autopsy results and have not yet ruled out the possibility of foul play.
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Alexis Sharkey, 26, was found dead in Houston on November 28. Sharkey's death has made for shocking headlines. She was found naked on the side of the road, had been married for just under a year, and was a budding Instagram influencer.

Interest in the sensational case has been clear: Sharkey had roughly 20,000 followers at the time of her death, according to data from SocialBlade, a social-media analytics website. As of Friday afternoon, Sharkey's Instagram account has more than 69,000 followers.

The Houston Police Department is awaiting the results of an autopsy before investigating the circumstances of Sharkey's death. A representative for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, which is conducting the autopsy, told Insider that the office has not yet completed it.

Sharkey's mother, Stacey Robinault, told Insider in a previous interview that she believed her daughter was murdered. "I believe solely that she was murdered, because of the manner in which her body was left," Robinault said. "It just drives deep into the soul that something very malicious happened here, and I want to get to the bottom of it."

A post shared by Alexis Sharkey | Mentor (@alexissharkey)

As the world awaits answers in Sharkey's death, here's a timeline of what we know about her disappearance, death, and discovery.

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Before her death, Sharkey spent Thanksgiving with her friends.

The day before Sharkey went missing on November 27, she celebrated Thanksgiving in Houston with her friends, The Daily Beast reported.

Sharkey had been working as a contractor with Monat, a hair and skincare brand that employs multilevel marketing (MLM) practices. Robinault told Insider that her daughter "loved" selling Monat products.

A post shared by Alexis Sharkey | Mentor (@alexissharkey)

A Monat spokesperson told Insider in a statement that Sharkey "was a warm, wonderful, and beloved, independent MONAT market partner. We are saddened by her tragic death and our thoughts are with her family and friends who loved her."

Sharkey's family learned that she was missing the day after Thanksgiving.

Sharkey's mother, Stacey Robinault told ABC 13 that she learned of her daughter's disappearance from Sharkey's husband, who called the Saturday following Thanksgiving to let them know that she was missing and he hadn't heard from her since Friday.

On November 28, Robinault posted on Facebook that her daughter was missing and hadn't been heard from in over 24 hours, saying that police were involved and that Alexis had been last seen in the Houston area.

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A post shared by Alexis Sharkey | Mentor (@alexissharkey)

Sharkey's mother previously told Insider that she hadn't seen her daughter since last Christmas, due to travel restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Sharkey had planned to return home to her parents' house in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving this year, but as cases continued to surge nationwide, the family decided against it.

"We were even going to get together over the week of Thanksgiving," she said. "Over the weekend of Thanksgiving is when she was killed, and so that's extremely heartbreaking as well."

A body was found on the side of the road in Houston on Saturday morning.

In the morning on Saturday, November 28, a sanitation worker employed by the City of Houston Solid Waste saw something strange on the side of the road. The employee called his boss, John Richardson, for help.

Richardson told local outlet KHOU that his employee said he thought he saw "a body or a mannequin," and that the employee was scared.

Richardson said he immediately called 911 after coming upon Sharkey's body, which was nude and had no visible injuries, police said. "It plays back in my head," Richardson told KHOU of discovering Sharkey's nude body. "It's been playing back in my head every day."

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The body was identified as Sharkey by her husband, Tom.

The Houston Police Department said in a press release that they identified the body as Sharkey on November 30. The woman was identified as Alexis Robinault, Sharkey's legal name. She used her husband's last name, Sharkey, professionally

Sharkey's husband, Tom Sharkey, told ABC 13 that he was the one to identify her body.

"Everybody was still looking for her, and I located her Sunday morning in the coroner's office. They couldn't ID my wife. They didn't know who she was. She was just there," he told ABC 13.

After the news of Sharkey's death came out, reports about her relationship with her husband began circulating.

Multiple friends of Sharkey's, some of them anonymous, told The Daily Beast that Sharkey's relationship with her husband was troubled. One friend claimed that the two were going through a divorce and that Sharkey had claimed that her husband "had been putting hands on her."

"I know they were going through some things," one friend, Kendra Martin, told The Daily Beast. "She had mentioned being separated even though they were still living in the same apartment. I actually pulled her aside two weeks ago to let her know I'm here for her, and that I know something is going on because her demeanor had changed over the last month."

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A post shared by Alexis Sharkey | Mentor (@alexissharkey)

Tom Sharkey did not respond to Insider's request for comment, but told ABC 13, a local ABC affiliate, in an interview that he was receiving death threats, as people on social media speculated that he had something to do with his wife's death. "She understood me. I understood her. We didn't fight when she left," he said of the night she went missing, and suggested that Sharkey was intoxicated. "I just told her she couldn't drive under the influence.

He also told ABC 13 that he and Alexis had a happy marriage, saying that they weren't filing for divorce.

Robinault, Sharkey's mother, told Fox News that she was not aware of any marital problems in her daughter's relationship.

Foul play has not been ruled out, but Houston police are awaiting the autopsy results.

The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences has not completed the autopsy. A representative for the office told Insider on Thursday that they could not share a timeline of when the autopsy might be completed.

The office previously told People that it had not ruled out the possibility of foul play.

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Houston police are awaiting the autopsy report before continuing their investigation into Sharkey's death, a representative previously told Insider.

Robinault, Sharkey's mother, told Insider that waiting for answers in Sharkey's death has been "excruciating because you're just so desperate for a chance to have some closure and some finality and justice to it."

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