Imagine being kidnapped and your captors telling you that they are supposed to kill you on orders from the man that’s supposed to love you? That’s exactly what happened with Noela Rukundo. Her husband, Balenga Kalala, had hired men to kill her and thought the plan succeeded. The details of the story are recounted by the Washington Post.
Rukundo’s ordeal began almost exactly a year ago, when she flew from her home in Melbourne with her husband, Kalala, to attend a funeral in her native Burundi. Her stepmother had died and the service left her saddened and stressed. She retreated to her hotel room in Bujumbura, the capital, early in the evening; despondent after the events of the day, she lay down in bed. Then her husband called.
“He told me to go outside for fresh air,” she told the BBC.
But the minute Rukundo stepped out of her hotel, a man charged forward, pointing a gun right at her.
“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.
The plot thickens because the men apparently never intended on killing Rukundo, since they knew her brother and they didn’t believe in killing women. Well, contract killers with a conscience is a nice sentiment I suppose.
They weren’t going to kill her, the men then explained — they didn’t believe in killing women, and they knew her brother. But they would keep her husband’s money and tell him that she was dead. After two days, they set her free on the side of a road, but not before giving her a cellphone, recordings of their phone conversations with Kalala, and receipts for the $7,000 in Australian dollars they allegedly received in payment, according to Australia’sThe Age.
They freed Rukundo and she made her way back to Australia unbeknownst to her husband. She then waited outside of funeral services until he appeared.
Noela Rukundo sat in a car outside her home, watching as the last few mourners filed out. They were leaving a funeral — her funeral.
Finally, she spotted the man she’d been waiting for. She stepped out of her car, and her husband put his hands on his head in horror.
“Is it my eyes?” she recalled him saying. “Is it a ghost?”
“Surprise! I’m still alive!” she replied.
Well, at least there’s a happy ending in this story, but the cautionary tale here is just be careful who you marry. Rukundo had be married to her husband for 11 years and they had 3 children, but that didn’t stop him from trying to end her life.
