Noela Rukundo (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)
Talk about awkward. I guess it really is hard to find good help these days.
Australian citizens Noela Rukundo and Balenga Kalala had been married for 10 years. While attending a funeral in her native Burundi, Rukundo was kidnapped at gunpoint.
“Don’t scream,” she recalled him saying. “If you start screaming, I will shoot you. They’re going to catch me, but you? You will already be dead.”
Rukundo, terrified, did as she was told. She was ushered into a car and blindfolded so she couldn’t see where she was being taken. After 30 or 40 minutes, the car came to a stop, and Rukundo was pushed into a building and tied to a chair.
She could hear male voices, she told the ABC. One asked her, “You woman, what did you do for this man to pay us to kill you?”
“What are you talking about?” Rukundo demanded.
“Balenga sent us to kill you.”
They were lying. She told them so. And they laughed.
“You’re a fool,” they told her.
There was the sound of a dial tone, and a male voice coming through a speakerphone. It was her husband’s voice.
“Kill her,” he said.
And Rukundo fainted.
But the kidnappers didn't kill her. They explained they didn't believe in killing women, and simply wanted to steal the $7,000 her husband had paid them. They let her go two days later, armed with phone recordings of their conversations with Kalala and receipts for the money paid to them.
Rukundo made her way back to Australia where she discovered her husband had set up a funeral service for her five days later. He had told their friends and family she died accidentally. She quietly watched the funeral from a nearby car when she saw her husband leaving.
She stepped out of the car and the man said, "Is it my eyes? Is it a ghost?"
"Surprise! I'm still alive!" she responded.
Kalala apologized profusely, but the police had already been notified. Kalala pled guilty and will serve nine years for incitement to murder.
Apparently, Kalala had grown paranoid that Rukundo was going to leave him for another man.
You can read more about the story here.