Woman crashes her own funeral, horrifying her husband, who had paid to have her killed

A woman named Noela Rukundo, gave her ex-
husband, Balenga Kalala, (both pictured above)
the shock of his life by turning up to her own
funeral, after he had contacted hitmen to have
her killed while they were still married.
Rukundo had met her husband 11 years earlier,
right after she arrived in Australia from Burundi.
He was a refugee from the Democratic Republic
of Congo, and they had the same social worker at
the resettlement agency that helped them get on
their feet.
Since Kalala already knew English, their social
worker often recruited him to translate for
Rukundo, who spoke Swahili. They fell in love,
moved in together in the Melbourne suburb of
Kings Park, and had three children (Rukundo also
had five kids from a previous relationship).
She learned more about her husband’s past — he
had fled a rebel army that had ransacked his
village, killing his wife and young son. She also
learned more about his character. Noela's ordeal
began five days earlier, and 7,500 miles away in
her native Burundi.
She had returned to Burundi, her birth country,
from her home in Melbourne, Australia, to attend
her stepmother's funeral. She lodged in a hotel. "I
had lost the last person who I call 'mother. It
was very painful. I was so stressed."she told BBC
By early evening, Noela had retreated to her hotel
room. As she lay dozing in the stifling city heat of
Bujumbura, her phone rang. It was a call from her
husband in Australia
"He says he'd been trying to get me for the whole
day," Noela says. "I said I was going to bed. He
told me, 'To bed? Why are you sleeping so early? I
say, 'I'm not feeling happy'. And he asks me,
'How's the weather? Is it very, very hot?' He told
me to go outside for fresh air." Noela took his
advice. "I didn't think anything. I just thought that
he cared about me, that he was worried about
me." But moments after stepping outside the
hotel compound, Noela found herself in danger.
"I opened the gate and I saw a man coming
towards me. Then he pointed the gun on me. He
just told me, 'Don't scream. If you start
screaming, I will shoot you. They're going to
catch me, but you? You will already be dead. So, I
did exactly what he told me."
The gunman motioned her towards a waiting car.
"I was sitting between two men. One had a small
gun, one had a long gun. And the men said to the
driver, 'Pass us a scarf.' Then they cover my face.
After that, I didn't say anything. They just said to
the driver, Let's go. I was taken somewhere, 30
to 40 minutes, then I hear the car stop." Noela
was pushed inside a building and tied to a chair.
"One of the kidnappers told his friend, 'Go call the
boss.' I can hear doors open but I didn't know if
their boss was in a room or if he came from
outside. "They ask me, 'What did you do to this
man? Why has this man asked us to kill you?'
And then I told them, 'Which man? Because I
don't have any problem with anybody.' They say,
'Your husband!' I say, 'My husband can't kill me,
you are lying!' And then they slap me. "After that
the boss says, 'You are very stupid, you are fool.
Let me call who has paid us to kill you.'"
The gang's leader made the call. "We already
have her," he triumphantly told his paymaster.
The phone was put on loudspeaker for Noela to
hear the reply. Her husband's voice said: "Kill
her." Just hours earlier, the same voice had
consoled her over the death of her stepmother
and urged her to take fresh air outside the hotel.
Now her husband Balenga Kalala had condemned
her to death.
"I heard his voice. I heard him. I felt like my head
was going to blow up. Then they described for
him where they were going to chuck the body." At
that, Noela says she passed out. As the gang's
leader ended the call to Kalala, Noela was coming
round. "I said to myself, I was already dead.
Nothing I can do can save me. But he looks at me
and then he says, 'We're not going to kill you. We
don't kill women and children. He told me I'd been
stupid because my husband paid them the
deposit in November. And when I went to Africa it
was January.
He asked me, 'How stupid can you be, from
November, you can't see that something is
wrong?'" He might have been a hit-man with
principles, but the gang's leader still took the
opportunity to extort more money from Kalala. He
called him back and informed him that the fee for
the murder had increased. He wanted a further
3,400 Australian dollars (£1,700) to finish the job.
Back at the hotel, Noela's brother was getting
worried about her disappearance. He called Kalala
in Australia to ask for $545 to pay the police to
open an investigation. Kalala feigned concern and
duly wired the money. After two days in captivity,
Noela was freed. "'We give you 80 hours to leave
this country. Your husband is serious. Maybe we
can spare your life, but other people, they're not
going to do the same thing. If God helps you,
you'll get to Australia.'"they told her
Before leaving Noela by the side of a road, the
gang handed her the evidence they hoped would
incriminate Kalala - a memory card containing
recorded phone conversations of him discussing
the murder and receipts for the Western Union
money transfers. "We just want you to go back, to
tell other stupid women like you what happened,"
the gang told Noela as they parted.
"You must learn something: you people get a
chance to go overseas for a better life. But the
money you are earning, the money the
government gives to you, you use it for killing
each other!"
Noela immediately began planning her return to
Australia. She called the pastor of her church in
Melbourne, Dassano Harruno Nantogmah, and
requested his help. "'It was in the middle of the
night. I said 'It's me, I'm still alive, don't tell
anybody.' He says, 'Noela, I don't believe it.
Balenga can't kill someone!' And I said, 'Pastor,
believe me!'" Three days later, on the evening of
22 February 2015, Noela was back in Melbourne.
By now, Kalala had informed the community that
his wife had died in a tragic accident. It was the
day he held a memorial service for her that she
walked in on him "It was around 7.30pm," Noela
says. "He was in front of the house. People had
been inside mourning with him and he was
escorting a group of them into a car." It was as
they drove away that Noela sprang her surprise.
"I stood just looking at him. He was scared, he
didn't believe it.
Then he starts walking towards me, slowly, like
he was walking on broken glass. "He kept talking
to himself and when he reached me, he touched
me on the shoulder. He jumped. "He did it again.
He jumped. Then he said, 'Noela, is it you?'…
Then he start screaming, 'I'm sorry for
everything.'" Noela called the police who ordered
Kalala off the premises and later obtained a court
order against him.
Days later, the police instructed Noela to call
Kalala. Kalala made a full confession to his wife,
captured on tape, begging for her forgiveness and
revealing why he had ordered the murder. "He say
he wanted to kill me because he was jealous,"
says Noela. "He think that I wanted to leave him
for another man." In a police interview, Kalala
denied any involvement in the plot. "The
pretence," wrote the judge at his trial in
December, "lasted for hours." But when confronted
with the recording of his telephone conversation
with Noela and the evidence she brought back
from Burundi he started to cry.
Kalala was still unable to offer any explanation
for his actions, suggesting only that "sometimes
[the] devil can come into someone to do
something but after they do it, they start thinking,
'Why I did that thing?'"
On 11 December last year, in court in Melbourne,
after pleading guilty to incitement to murder,
Kalala was sentenced to nine years in prison. "His
voice always comes in the night - 'Kill her, kill
her,'" says Noela of the nightmares that now
plague her. "Every night, I see what was
happening in those two days with the
kidnappers." Ostracised by many in Melbourne's
African community, some of whom blame her for
Kalala's conviction, Noela sees a difficult future
for her and her eight children.