'People Magazine Investigates': Tracking Down the Killer of Arizona College Student Adrienne Salinas

A friend's birthday bash would be the last party 19-year-old Adrienne Salinas would ever attend the night of June 14, 2013.

Although Salinas hosted the celebration with her two roommates at their Tempe, Ariz., home, they say the college student wasn't in the partying mood.

She had other things on her mind.

The unsettling case is the subject of the new episode of People Magazine Investigates. Titled "Darkness in the Desert," the episode airs tonight at 9 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery and also streams on discovery+. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

That evening, her roommate Shainey Duggan says Salinas was upset her boyfriend Francisco "Fran" Arteaga was showing interest in other women at the party.

During the early morning hours of June 15, Salinas left the party, returning soon after and speaking briefly to a roommate.

She left again at 4 a.m. and crashed her car not too far from her house.

A witness said she was driving erratically.

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"The caller said that a white sedan had passed them at a high rate of speed and hit the curb," Sgt. Alan Akey with the Tempe Police Department explains in the episode. "This caller watched this happen and was concerned, but when the caller went to check on the driver herself, the car drove away even though it had two damaged tires."

Salinas was reportedly on her way to Arteaga's home, but with two blown out tires, she called for a cab to pick her up at a convenience store in the neighborhood.

The cab driver allegedly told authorities he was unable to locate Salinas that morning and never picked her up.

The next day — Father's Day — her dad Rick Salinas found her abandoned Mercury Sable.

"[I was] kinda going crazy trying to figure out where she was, so I drove through the neighborhood just – what else could I do? I was really worried," he says. "And then I see her car."

But his daughter was nowhere to be found.

Nearly two months later, the skeletal remains of Salinas were discovered in a wash about 30 miles away in the Apache Junction desert.

Investigators were left trying to piece together who put her there — and why.

See more on the disturbing mystery of the death of the Arizona college student on People Magazine Investigates ("Darkness in the Desert"), airing tonight, August 15, at 9 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery and also streaming on discovery+.