A man who paid for his wife to be killed was left stunned as she turned up alive – at her own funeral.
Balenga Kalala, from Melbourne, suspected that his wife, Noela Rukundo, was cheating on him and paid gunmen around £3,500 to kill her as she attended her stepmother’s funeral in Burundi.
However, according to the Evening Standard, the gunmen decided not to kill the woman. The would-be contract killers informed the brother of Ms. Rukundo of the plan, handing over details of the payments they had received to carry out the shooting and recorded phone conversations.
At that point, the gunmen told Kalala that they had carried out the killing, while Ms Rukundo’s brother informed her family members that she had died in an accident.
Unbeknown to her husband, Ms Rukundo travelled home, confronting her spouse at her own funeral service.
Kalala, who has lived in Australia since arriving from the Democratic Republic of Congo 12 years ago, initially denied any involvement in the plan.
However, Ms Rukundo prompted a confession during a phone conversation that was secretly recorded by police and he was later sentences to nine years in prison for his crime.
