HUNTER: 'Brutal and vicious' GTA killer who butchered wife dies in prison

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Nelson Tayongtong is on the night train to hell.

The 52-year-old former Toronto man pegged out of this life in a B.C. prison. Officials said it was natural causes, likely a stroke. And the world is a much better place without him.

On Sept. 8, 2012, Tayontong attacked his wife, Aicha Saludares, in their Mississauga apartment. By the time his bloodlust was sated, he had stabbed Saludares a staggering 85 times. There were 53 additional “incised” wounds.

Family members made the horrifying discovery at Saludares’ apartment unit at 480 Lakeshore Rd. E. in the city’s Lakeview area.

Cops and paramedics who attended the crime scene that late summer’s day later described it as “gruesome” and like “something out of a horror movie.” Tayontang was arrested two weeks later in Oakville.

What unfolded was a tangled tale of woe. How one of life’s curveballs can unleash a once normal person onto the path to homicidal violence.

Tayontong and Saludares had both been born in the Philippines and immigrated to Canada. Not long after the pair married in 2010, Tayontong suffered a debilitating stroke, losing much of his vision and his ability to walk and talk.

But his new bride stood behind him. She worked a full-time job as a mortgage agent with the Canada Mortgage Store, and had a side hustle as an independent distributor for a company that sold nutritional products.

Enterprising, caring, God-fearing, devoted.

Even as her and her new husband’s lives became increasingly difficult, Saludares, 40, remained cheerful and used social media to keep family and friends back home up to date on her hubby’s medical crisis.

She wrote: “(M)y husband is slowly gaining his memories back. … he is talking! I’m so happy!”

Under her care, Tayongton’s precarious health began improving. On her birthday, in April 2011, she expressed her gratitude to her friends, family and God. That happiness and feeling of being blessed would tragically be short-lived.

“I have so many things to be grateful in my life and I am excited for the years to come! Life is beautiful!” she wrote.

But over the next 16 months, her outlook began to sour. Friends told the Mississauga News that the cheery immigrant grew increasingly unhappy in her relationship with the man who would eventually kill her.

There were suggestions that there was a new man in the victim’s life, or maybe money was the motive. Either way, Tayongtong was not going to be a part of Saludares’ future.

And in October 2017, nearly five years after the murder, Nelson Tayongtong was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 17 years. The killer appealed based on a Brampton courthouse outburst where he “uttered several inculpatory statements including admissions of guilt.”

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Judge Leonard Ricchetti ruled the statements made by Tayongton were fair game for prosecutors. His appeal was kicked to the curb by the Supreme Court in 2021. With good reason.

“The murder was as brutal as imaginable,” Ricchetti wrote. “The utterly brutal nature of the attack demonstrates a callous, personal animosity to Aicha.”

Riccheti also took umbrage at the killer putting the murder weapon in the victim’s hand to pin some of the blame on the dead woman.

“Whether this was a feeble attempt to try to establish Aicha was using a knife to instigate the attack or defend herself against an intruder is not clear on the evidence,” the sentencing decision said. “This murder was carried out in the most brutal, cold-blooded and callous manner.

“It is simply impossible to imagine the amount of sheer hatred and drive that Mr. Tayongtong had that morning when he murdered Aicha.”

And now, Nelson Tayongtong is dead. Unmourned. Despised. Forgotten.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun