Where Arianna Jones' Date Went Before The Movie

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Two movie theatre souvenir cups were sitting next to a shallow grave in the Arizona desert, the kind you buy at a concession stand on a first date because the large drink comes in a collectible cup, and you figure you'll keep it on your nightstand for a week. Who hasn't done that? And then ends up with a collection of movie theatre cups that at some point you're like, why do we have all these cups?
Unfortunately, our conversation on this case isn't about movie theatre cups. It's about a dead woman.
And I invite you to leave your thoughts in the comment section of Substack and YouTube as we begin following the murder of Adrianna Jones. Cadaver Dogs led investigators to a remote stretch of scrubland north of Phoenix near Lake Pleasant on July 11th of 2026 What they found was a body buried in a shallow hole in the dirt decomposing in the July heat and those two souvenir cups resting in the sand like they'd been sent down at a picnic.
Adrianna Bailey Jones was 21 years old. She was a mother. She had a two year old son. She'd gone to the movies with a man she met on Snapchat. She never came home. But investigators would discover that Domonic Rodolico's evening getting started Adrianna's apartment. It started somewhere else entirely. And what he allegedly did before he ever picked her up is what turns this from a bad date into something much, much worse. Adrianna Bailey Jones spent the first 18 years of her life looking for something most people take for granted. She was adopted at three years old. She moved between homes. She bounced through a system that's supposed to protect children and instead just kept shuffling her from one place to the next. When she was 18, she reconnected with her biological mother, Sophia Sardinus, three years, that's the long Adrianna had with the mother she'd been separated from as a toddler. Three years of building what they'd missed, three years of holidays and phone calls and the ordinary moments that families accumulate without thinking about it because they assumed they'll get more.
Sardinus would later tell reporters that her daughter wanted one thing for her future, a family. That's all she wanted. And she was building one. She had her own apartment in Glendale, Arizona. She had a dog. She had a two-year-old son. She was 21 and she was doing the things she'd spent her whole childhood hoping for. And on the evening of July 5th, 2026, Adriana agreed to meet someone she'd been talking to on social media. A man named Dominic Rodolico, 24 years old from Peoria. They connected on Snapchat, exchanged a few brief phone calls, and made plans to see a movie together, a first date. Rodolico picked Adriana up from her apartment. They drove to Harkins Theatre and went to a movie around 9 PM. Surveillance cameras inside the theatre captured the two of them together. Nothing remarkable, two people on a date. When they left, cameras caught Rodolico carrying a concession stand cup. You know what I'm talking about. Ones that you...

**SPEAKER_3** (3:42)
You're like, yeah, we've been trying to get rid of those for a long time.

**Tony Brueski** (3:45)
But every time you go to the trash can and go, I'm going to throw this away. You're like, but it's such a convenient cup. Or maybe that's me, and maybe I have a hoarding problem. Then cell phone data picks up the story. Both phones travel north out of the Phoenix metro area into a remote, undeveloped stretch of desert near Lake Pleasant Parkway and old Carefree Highway. According to the probable cause affidavit, investigators described this area as extremely remote, secluded, underdeveloped, with no apparent legitimate reason for anyone to be there. Both phones stay in that area for roughly 45 to 50 minutes. And then Adrianna's phone disconnects from the network, powered off airplane motor, otherwise gone 10 minutes after her phone goes dark. Rodolico's phone leaves the area alone. He doesn't call 911, doesn't contact police, doesn't tell anyone what happened in that desert, per the affidavit. The next thing investigators observed Rodolico doing was cleaning his car. He drove to renew by car wash, vacuumed the passenger side rear area of the vehicle, wiped it down with towels, kept the towels inside the vehicle. Back at his house, he opened the trunk and was observed wiping down the interior.
Two days passed, July 7th, the relative calls Glendale Police because nobody's heard from Adriana since July 5th. Officers go to her apartment. They find her dog in a kennel with no food and no water alone for days. A friend tells police that Adriana had plans to meet someone she'd been talking to for a movie that evening. And that's the last anyone knew. Sophia Sardinia spent that week doing what any mother would do. She searched, she handed out flyers around the neighborhood. She held on to the hope that this was just a missing person case and that her daughter was somewhere alive waiting to be found. Glendale PD posted photos of Adriana and asked the public to come forward with anything they knew. Behind the scenes investigators were already moving surveillance footage, cell phone records, automated license plate reader data. They identified Rodolico as the person Adriana was with on July 5th of the days. They placed him under mobile and stationary surveillance. They tracked his phone, they tracked his car. And what they found in the data is the thing that makes this case different from a tragedy that could have been an accident. A fight that went wrong, a moment that spiraled because this wasn't that. Less than a year before the date, Dominic Scott Glenn Rodolico was sentenced in Maricopa County for impersonating an employee at a quick trip gas station and stealing roughly $200,000 or $200 from the register. He allegedly did the same thing at a second quick trip in Phoenix. He pled guilty to criminal impersonation, was sentenced to November 25 and was placed on two years of supervised probation. The court had a word for Dominic Rodolico at that sentencing. The word was non-dangerous.