Sali had originally agreed to meet at the headquarters of the 1st Infantry Division in Jolo, the provincial capital. At the last minute, he proposed a different location: a public market in Barangay Danag, Patikul. Bautista agreed. He had also invited Fidel V. Ramos, then Chief of the Philippine Constabulary, to join the delegation, but Ramos declined due to a prior engagement in Zamboanga City. That prior commitment may have saved the future president's life. When the army delegation arrived in Patikul, they walked into an ambush. Thirty-five officers and soldiers were killed, including Bautista, Pangilinan, and four lieutenant colonels. Only one man survived: a sergeant serving as the group's radioman, who either played dead until the attackers left or, according to other accounts, escaped and fled to Sabah, Malaysia.

President Ferdinand Marcos delivered the eulogy for the fallen soldiers. His words were blunt: Bautista and his men had been "killed with perfidy and treachery." The massacre, Marcos declared, "conclusively brands the MNLF as the violator of the ceasefire agreement." The killings deepened the Philippine government's distrust of the separatist movement and hardened military resolve in the region. For the families of the dead, the betrayal was personal. These soldiers had gone to talk peace. They had accepted the changed meeting place. They had walked in without the firepower that might have saved them, because the purpose of the trip was dialogue, not combat.

Decades later, Bautista's son Emmanuel T. Bautista rose through the ranks of the Philippine Army to become its Commanding General. In 2012, he returned to Jolo and inaugurated a museum at Camp General Teodulfo Bautista in Barangay Busbus, the military installation named in honor of his father. The camp sits on the same island where the elder Bautista died. In 2009, a stone memorial at the massacre site in Barangay Danag had been restored through a joint effort of the Philippine Marine Corps, the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, and the residents of Danag themselves. The memorial stands in a place that was once a public market, where soldiers came to talk and did not leave alive.

The Patikul massacre occupies a particular place in Philippine military history. It was not the largest loss of life in the Moro conflict, nor the last. But the killing of a general and his entire delegation during what was supposed to be a peace meeting shattered the framework of trust that negotiations require. The conflict between the Philippine government and Moro separatists would continue for decades, through additional ceasefires, additional violations, and eventual political accommodations including the creation of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Whether peace can hold in Sulu remains an open question. The memorial in Barangay Danag is a reminder that even the attempt carries risk.