A Halloween story: Tuyor's special Adobo

"Even though I cooked it very well, there’s still a curious after taste when I ate it.”

HE had less than an hour to finish. His family—he thought—might start suspecting where he got the main ingredient for their supper so late in the evening.

Jovencio Tuyor crazily chopped the onions, garlic, hurriedly crushes the paminta seeds and crumpled the laurel leaves. Simultaneously, he broiled his prized meat he got that evening. “Maybe this would lessen the pungent smell of the meat,” he muttered.

After broiling the meat for 20 or so minutes, he marinated it with vinegar and soy sauce in a pot. He poured all the ingredients he chopped earlier, dashed it with some rock salt and monosodium glutamate and let the contents broil again for another 20 minutes.

Moments later, Jovencio hollered to his wife and kids. “Dinner is ready guys,” he said in vernacular.

It had been a long dry spell without eating meat and kids were famished, the Tuyors ate their repast that night with gusto.

Earlier that evening of September 30, this year, Jovencio, his eldest son Melchor, Rey Dadole, Arante Maravillas and brothers Johnny and Junmar Candar had been drinking in a village store. They were neighbors in Naawan—a sleepy coastal town 30 minutes away from Cagayan de Oro city.

After about 30 minutes into their drinking, the group decided to part ways and call it a night. Ten to 15 meters en route to their respective homes, Arante, Johnny and Junmar heard an eerie shriek. Realizing it was Rey’s voice frantically yelling “mama tabang”—they rushed to where the shouts came from.

When they trained their flashlight to where the voice came from they saw Rey, his back to the ground, while Jovencio was striding him plunging and hacking the boy with a scythe. With each lunges and hacks, they could hear the boy’s blood oozing to the grassy ground, where at one moment they even thought they heard it bubbling as Rey gargled his own blood.

Noticing the light, Jovencio looked up to his drinking buddies. “Dili baya mo magsaba bai ha,” in between heavy panting, he calmly said.

Scared out of their wits, they scrambled to their homes but Melchor remained with his father. Jovencio then scalped half of Rey’s face including one of his earlobes. Not contented, he lopped off the boy’s arm-muscles—both the triceps and bicep—up to his elbow. Father and son, then, hurriedly left for their home.

Estenely, Rey’s mother, having last seen him afternoon of September 30—worried sick—finally decided to file for a missing person at the Naawan Police on wee hours of October 2.

That same day, hours later, Naawan Police found Rey’s mutilated corpse lying on a grassy knoll not far from where the witnesses said they had a drinking spree. Half of his face was missing as well as almost half of his left arm, while 31 stabs and hack wounds were found in the different parts of his torso.

Rev. Sanny Limbag—a minister of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) in Naawan for six years—said that blinding rage may have pushed Jovencio to commit the grisly acts.

Unknown to Rey’s mother and a couple of weeks before that fateful drinking spree, Melchor got mauled in one of the town’s dark alleys. He was pounded so hard he had to go to their village clinic. While recuperating, he identified Rey as his attacker to his father, Jovencio.

However, Jovencio had been known in their village to have committed other disturbing practices.

His neighbors said they once saw him eat a Carabao meat raw after rustling it from a neighboring sitio. Jovencio had also been known to include cat meat in his family’s meals (According to his wife, he was the cook of the family.).

Jovencio was arrested by SPO1 Arnold Sacabin, PO3 Cirilo Manco Sr, PO2 Jope Cagabcab and PO1 Senador Ostero of the Naawan Police Station hours after finding Rey’s body.

During his preliminary inquest last October 23, Jovencio showed no sign of remorse or regret as he stared blankly at the prosecutor who peppered him with questions.

Arante Maravillas and brothers Johnny and Junmar Candar—who stood as witnesses—denied having partaken of Rey’s flesh and subsequently release from the municipal jail where they were held after Jovencio’s arrest.

Melchor—and the rest of the Tuyors—have since left town, leaving Jovencio on his own in Misamis Oriental Provincial Jail, where he is currently being detained awaiting his formal trial.

There he confessed to local media he cooked and ate Rey’s flesh with his family.

“Even though I cooked it very well, there’s still a curious after taste when I ate it,” Jovencio had told media in the vernacular.

Back in Naawan, the people still talk about the incident albeit in hushed tones. Rural grapevine had since abuzz and the sleepy coastal town west of this city will never be the same again.

“After the Tuyor incident, the people here were never the same. I know this will forever be etched in the memories of the people here,” said Limbag.

(All anecdotal situations are based on real events, affidavits of witnesses, police reports and the accounts of the self-confessed cannibal, himself.)