From the archives: this story was last updated in June 2019.
The husband of this African-born Australian woman thought she had been murdered, for he had planned it. Little did he expect she would give him the shock of a lifetime by showing up (alive and well) at her own funeral!“I opened the gate and I saw a man coming towards me. Then he pointed the gun on me,” Rukundo said. She was held captive for two days while her captors waited for a further 3,400 Australian dollars (approx. US$2,388) to be wired to them from the man who had hired them.
During her captivity, the gang’s leader had called the paymaster, who told him heartlessly: “Kill her.” The gang’s leader deliberately put the phone on loudspeaker for Rukundo to hear. Much to her horror, Rukundo recognized the voice on the other end of the call. It was her husband’s!
Rukundo couldn’t believe the man whom she'd loved with all her heart had hired hitmen to kill her. “I heard his voice. I heard him. I felt like my head was going to blow up,” she said. “Then they described for him where they were going to chuck the body.”
Fortunately, Rukundo was eventually released by her kidnappers, who apparently didn’t want to kill a woman. They gave her all the evidence she would need to implicate her husband and have him locked up: a mobile phone memory card with recorded telephone conversations plus receipts from the Western Union money transfer. Apparently, her husband, Kalala, had paid the hitmen almost AU$7,000 (approx. US$4,917) to kill her.
Kalala, who thought the murder had been executed as planned, then proceeded to inform his friends how Rukundo had been killed in an accident while in Burundi. Upon hearing the tragic news, the African community in Melbourne provided spiritual and financial support to Kalala and their three children, aged 5, 10, and 11.
On Feb. 22, 2015, when the last mourners were leaving, Kalala was suddenly confronted face to face with none other than Rukundo, his wife. He was shocked. “Is it my eyes? Is it a ghost?” a petrified Kalala said.
“Surprise! I’m still alive!” Rukundo replied. “You are a wicked man.” Kalala approached her as if “walking on broken glass.” He jumped as he touched her shoulder. “Noela, is it you?” he queried. Then he screamed, “I’m sorry for everything!”
But it was too late, for Rukundo had rung the police. “I felt like somebody who had risen again,” she said. “He say he wanted to kill me because he was jealous. He think that I wanted to leave him for another man.”
It was the wife who got the last laugh in the end, for on Dec. 11, 2015, Kalala was sentenced to nine years in prison. “My situation, my past life? That is gone. I’m starting a new life now,” Rukundo said.
