Lisa Knoefel was a social worker when she took 16-year-old Sabrina Zunich into their home in Willoughby, Ohio, as her foster daughter.
About a year later in 2012, Lisa discovered that her husband, Kevin Knoefel, who was a truck driver was romantically involved with Sabrina.
Kevin encouraged Sabrina to kïll Lisa. He told her they would cash out on Lisa's life insurance policy which was close to $800,000. With these words, Sabrina acted.
Image: Lisa and Kevin(top frame), and Sabrina(bottom right)
On November 16, 2012, she wore a mask and attacked Lisa in the couple's bedroom, stâbbing her close to 200 times. The attack was so brutal that the 10-inch knife was bent afterward.
Lisa's 13-year-old daughter saw the attack and called 911. Sabrina was arrested, and taken into custody. Kevin cashed out on the insurance policy and started living lavishly, even taking flying lessons. This angered Sabrina who then told the real story.
They were both convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
A teenager who admitted killing her foster mother while having an affair with the woman's husband was sentenced Monday to life in prison but will be eligible for parole after 30 years.
Sabrina Zunich, 19, of Wickliffe, Ohio, said she killed Lisa Knoefel, 41, of Willoughby Hills, Ohio, on Nov. 16, 2012, because Knoefel's now-43-year-old husband, Kevin, asked her to. Zunich had been living with the Knoefels since July 2011, and she and Kevin Knoefel had been having sexual relations since March 2012.
"Lisa did not deserve what happened to her," Zunich said while wiping tears from her eyes in Lake County Common Pleas Court here. Zunich was 17 when she killed Lisa Knoefel in this tony Cleveland suburb, stabbing her social worker foster mother 12 times, cutting her 166 times with a serrated kitchen knife and pleading guilty to aggravated murder.
Lisa Knoefel's teenage daughter had tried to pull Zunich off her mother and called 911.
Zunich grew up in the care of her grandmother because her parents were drug addicts, but Lake County officials had custody of her since 2010 because of her previous behavior at her grandmother's house. Her father, also mentally ill, died in 2012, likely of a drug overdose, according to Cleveland Scene magazine.
In June, a Lake County jury found Kevin Knoefel, a truck driver who was out of state at the time of his wife's death, guilty of murder conspiracy and complicity. He also was convicted of six counts of sexual battery for preying on Zunich.
Zunich had testified that Kevin Knoefel had told her his wife was "worth more dead than alive" because of an almost $800,000 life-insurance policy on her and that her foster father had helped plan the details down to the knife that was used in the act.
In August, he was sentenced to life in prison and will be eligible for parole in 30 years.

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