Wife Crashes Own Funeral After Husband Paid to Have Her Killed

This story is one for the ages.

What do you do when your husband pays people to have you killed, but then the killers turn on your husband, who’s currently holding your funeral? Easy, do what Noela Rukundo did: Jump out of a car and yell, “Surprise!”

Rukundo, a mother of eight from Australia, was visiting the African country of Burundi to attend her mother’s funeral when she was approached by an armed man and kidnapped. According to the BBC, a group of men brought her to a building where they asked, “What did you do to this man?” She replied she didn’t know any man with whom she had disagreements and the men replied that they were talking about her husband. Rukundo didn’t believe that her husband, who had telephoned her hours earlier to see how she was holding up, would do this, that is, until the men had him on the phone.

Rukundo said she heard her husband’s voice saying, “Kill her.”

But they didn’t kill her. Instead, they offered to turn the tables on her husband, saying that they don’t kill women and children. Rukundo’s husband paid the men $7,000 to have her killed, but the men apparently have a conscience. Instead, they just decided to extort Rukundo’s husband for the money and give her the evidence she needed to indict him, including recorded phone conversations they had and receipts from money transfers. Everybody wins!

Three days after her kidnapping, Rukundo was back in Australia. By the time she got there though, her husband had informed everyone that she had been in a traffic accident and was dead.

Rukundo arrived back at her house to find her husband hosting a wake, and while a steady stream of mourners filed out of the house toward their cars, she stepped out and said, “Surprise! I’m alive!”

“He put his hands on his head and said, ‘Is it my eyes? Is it a ghost?'” she told BBC.

Rukundo was able to call the police and ultimately her husband confessed to the whole ordeal. He is currently serving nine years in prison.

But Rukundo doesn’t know why he wanted to kill her.

“I loved this man with all my heart!” she told BBC. “I give him, beautiful and handsome, two boys and one girl. So I don’t know why he choose to kill me.”

Despite almost being murdered, Rukundo chooses to live life to the fullest.

“I will stand up like a strong woman. My situation, my past life? That is gone. I’m starting a new life now.”