“I wish I could have gotten more recent pictures,” a devastated Alexa Massaro, 18, posted to her Instagram Stories on May 16, the day her mother, Ashley Massaro, passed away. The young girl shared a red carpet photo with her mother, the former Survivor contestant and ex-WWE Superstar. “I love you, mommy. I want to wake up in your arms more than anything. I want to give u a big hug. Please come back. This can’t be real.” In a second picture, one of Ashley with Alexa as a child, the young woman wrote, “please God. This can’t be it.”
Alexa’s mother was reportedly discovered unconscious in her Smithtown, Long Island home on May 16 after she failed to show up to her job at a local radio station. Paramedics performed CPR en route to a nearby hospital, but it sadly wasn’t enough. She passed away at the medical facility, from what is being reported as an apparent suicide. “I can confirm that she has passed and has died and that she was 39 and that she was from Smithtown but I can not confirm any other details because we don’t have them,” the Suffolk County Police Department PIO told HollywoodLife.com. “And since it was considered a non-criminal death we will not have them. We normally don’t release that info for non-criminal deaths.”
Ashley skyrocketed to fame in 2005 after winning that year’s WWE Diva’s Search. During her time in the company, she would feud with Mickie James, Victoria, and Candice Michelle. Before her joining the sports entertainment juggernaut, Ashley appeared in a handful of Playboy pictorials. She would land on the cover of Playboy’s April 2007 issue. That same year, she briefly competed in the 15th season of Survivor. She returned to the WWE in January 2008 but was released from her contract in July of that year. “We are saddened to learn of the tragic death of former WWE Superstar Ashley Massaro,” the company said in the wake of her death. “She … was beloved by her fellow Superstars and fans around the world. WWE offers its condolences to Ashley’s family and friends.”
Before her death, Ashley was part of a class action lawsuit against the WWE, according to The Blast. She was one of the 60 wrestlers who accused the company of failing to protect its employees from repeated head trauma and concussions. Aside from my on-going physical injuries that were sustained in the ring, and my former battle with addiction, to this day I suffer from depression, for which I take medication; migraine headaches; and severe short-term memory loss,” Ashley reportedly wrote in a 2017 affidavit.