You couldn’t make it up, well you could, but it would look something like the classic film Double Jeopardy. In Burundi a woman gate crashed her own funeral to confront her husband, who had paid to have her killed and thought the job had been well done.
The BBC reports that Noela Rukundo waited in a car outside her own home, watching grieving acquaintances leave her own funeral. She stayed seated until she saw the person she was waiting for: her husband.
You might expect a husband, who had lost his wife of ten years, to be overcome with joy at realising that she was not in fact dead. Not so in this case. He had ordered a team of hit men to kill her, successfully he thought. They had told him it all went smoothly.
Noela told the BBC that he touched her shoulder, and realising that he was not in fact seeing things, jumped back in horror and started screaming.
She says he told her ‘I’m sorry for everything’.
Understandably, Noela was not in the mood for apologies and really did feel it was to late to say sorry. She called the police on him, he pleaded guilty and has now been sentenced to nine years in prison. The hit men even testified against their employer to help convict him.What on earth, you might ask, would drive a husband to hire people to kill his wife, the mother of their eight children? It seems this is a classic case of jealousy, Noela said that her husband was tyring to kill her because he thought she was going to leave him for another man, which she says is unfounded.
The sorry saga began a year ago when Noela and her husband had travelled from Australia to her native Burundi for a family funeral.
On leaving her hotel she found herself in peril. She relayed the events which followed to the BBC:
‘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 then 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 say 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.’
They then pushed Noela inside a building and tied her 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 tell 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.’
Noela then spent two days with her kidnappers before being released. Luckily her brother had made a call back to Australia and secured finds to pay the police in Burundi to open an investigation.
And why exactly did the hitmen set her free? Apparently, they told her, it was because they didn't believe in killing women and, fortunately for her, they knew her brother. they kept her husband's money and told him they had killed her. The released her, leaving her by the side of a road with a mobile phone and recordings of their calls with her husband which helped for him to be convicted.
Back in Melbourne it’s far from a return to life as normal for Noela, the African community where she lives are apparently angry with her and blame her for her husband’s conviction. Things are far from easy for her and her eight children.
However, she is not prepared to be intimidated, she told the BBC,
‘I will stand up like a strong woman, my situation, my past life? That is gone. I'm starting a new life now.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.