(ominous music)
- [news caster] a willoughby mother
Murdered in her own home.
Tonight, police say the woman's foster child is to blame.
- [narrator] an unthinkable crime.
- I can see blood on the blade, I can see blood on her.
- Sabrina had stabbed lisa 178 times.
- [narrator] a family forever changed.
- [neighbor] everything seemed so normal
And then this happens.
- Do you recall coming out of the bedroom
With a knife in your hand?
- No.
- [narrator] a twist no one saw coming.
- Were you and lisa
In the process of going through a divorce?
- [narrator] investigators searching for answers
In the interrogation room.
- Why is he not cooperating with us?
What is he hiding from us?
(eerie music)
- [narrator] every suspect accused of a crime
Has the right to remain silent.
Many agree to be interrogated anyway
But they can stop the interview at any moment,
Making it a race against time.
Justice hangs in the balance.
(phone ringing)
(atmospheric music)
- [randy] I was on patrol
And I heard the call come over dispatch.
- [dispatcher] I have a female with stab wounds.
Attention, ambulance, the ambulance is needed.
- You could tell by the tone of her voice,
That it wasn't normal.
(tense music)
- When the police arrived, they found megan knoefel
Who'd made the 911 call
Come outta the house and say, "you better come in,
Hurry, hurry."
- She was frantically waving her hands for me to hurry up
And get in the house,
Screaming that "she's gonna kill my mother."
She was very, very panicked, very frantic.
So we approached the bedroom door
And I was expecting to hear something.
You're being told somebody's being stabbed
Or, you know, some kind of fight going on,
But you hear nothing.
It was eerie.
(atmospheric music)
- Sabrina has a 12-inch bread knife
That she is holding in her right hand.
She's covered in blood.
- I can see blood on the blade, I can see blood on her.
Immediately we started screaming to drop the knife.
It almost like snapped her out of whatever she was in,
Back to some type of reality.
I kicked it away from her and we put her down on the floor.
It was a very tense couple seconds.
- When I first walked into the house,
The scene was horrifying.
It was very bloody.
The smell of death.
(tense music)
- Lisa was laying in between the bed and the wall.
There was a lot of blood on the walls, on the bed,
And on the ceiling as well.
- The coroners documented that sabrina had stabbed lisa
178 times.
- It was a longer bread knife
And the blade was actually curved, it was bent.
It's just, you try to picture in your mind
What had to have happened to make that knife bend like that.
I could hear a child crying from my left.
We opened up the door to clear the closet
And that's when I found a very, very small child screaming.
(atmospheric music)
- [ron] the suspect, sabrina zunich,
She was a 18 year-old foster child of lisa knoefel.
Also inside the house was megan zanella and hailey knoefel,
Megan being 13 and hailey being three years old.
- The father, kevin, was away on a trip.
He was a truck driver and he was in michigan at that point.
(soft music)
- Lisa was married before she met kevin.
Her first child, megan, was actually born in 1999.
Her first marriage ended in 2003
And she met kevin soon after and they got married in 2006.
And the very next year, their daughter hailey was born.
- [ron] lisa worked for the
Cuyahoga county child and family services
In the sex division.
- She worked on some of the most difficult cases
In the county.
Caring for children wasn't just a job, she lived it.
She brought troubled kids into her home.
- Sabrina was in foster care for many years
Before she came to the knoefels.
(soft music)
- Sabrina landing with the knoefels
Really represented a fresh start for her.
She went from a troubled home
With her biological father and grandma,
To a youth shelter where she did not want to be.
She's getting along with the family,
She's doing great at school.
She's not getting in trouble.
Things seemed to be looking up for her.
I couldn't find anything
Indicating something like this could happen.
(atmospheric music)
- Our main goal when we first interviewed sabrina
Was to get sabrina to tell us exactly what happened.
We caught her coming out of the room, so we knew she did it.
We wanted to know why.
- [detective] mm hmm.
- We were trying to lock her into a story.
We try to go over the same event over and over again,
To see, a, if they're gonna change their story
Or b, if they're just going to kind of give in
And be like, okay, I'm gonna tell these guys now,
'cause I don't have it in me to lie anymore.
- When she's giving us short, one-word answers,
We know she's lying to us.
She doesn't have a good explanation for it.
She doesn't wanna tell us the explanation
Because the explanation's gonna bring long,
Drawn out comments.
(atmospheric music)
- [detective] mm hmm.
- [detective] mm.
(dramatic music)
(tense music)
- A willoughby mother murdered in her own home.
- Tonight police say the woman's foster child is to blame.
Authorities say lisa knoefel was stabbed to death.
Her 18 year-old foster daughter is in custody tonight.
(clock ticking)
- First thing she does is she has a itch on her forehead
For no apparent reason.
When people touch their face or, you know,
Start scratching or start tapping their toes,
It's a good indication to us
That the person's probably lying, they're nervous.
What we're trying to do here is to get her to open up to us.
She looks damaged to us,
So we don't wanna take a hardline approach with her.
We wanna take a nice, easy approach with her.
Her emotions were up and down,
We call that a big pendulum swing.
Sometimes she'd be crying then, you know,
She'd wanna listen.
That is a very big indicator that they're trying to lie
Or they're covering something up.
(atmospheric music)
- Sabrina never denies committing the murder.
She just acts confused
When I tell her that she's the one who killed lisa knoefel.
We could have waited here for four days
And we were probably gonna get the same answers from her.
We made the decision that we're just gonna cut this down,
'cause she's not gonna give us anything else that we need.
(atmospheric music)
- I went out to greet him.
He started asking me very strange questions.
He wanted me to tell him graphic details
About what had just happened to his wife.
There are a ton of more relevant things
That I would imagine somebody would wanna know, you know,
How are my kids doing?
Can I see my kids?
And I just thought that was bizarre.
- Police say 18 year-old sabrina zunich
Had been with the victim and her family
For about a year and a half.
- [neighbor] everything seemed so normal
And then this happens.
Someone finally reaches out
And wants you a part of their family,
They wanna take you in and help you
And guide you through life and you kill,
And you do this.
(tense music)
- There was some trouble
That was stirring in their marriage.
Friends of lisa said that they were talking about
Possibly getting a divorce because it got that bad.
The root of the problem was sabrina.
Kevin, lisa, and sabrina
Did have a meeting with a social worker
And there was a conversation
About when sabrina would leave the knoefels' house.
- Sabrina turned 18 when she was still in high school,
Senior in high school,
And kevin really wanted to keep being her foster father.
- I believe it was all agreed upon
That sabrina would stay at the knoefel house
Until after she graduated from high school,
Which would've been in June the following year.
(atmospheric music)
I was hoping to find some text messages, some emails,
Some search history as to why this crime took place.
Over the past several weeks,
Kevin knoefel and sabrina text messaged each other
Over 1,000 times.
I did not think it was normal for a foster father
And a foster daughter
To have thousands of text messages
Between the two of them.
- On the night of the murder,
Kevin had a perfect alibi.
He was out of town for work,
Driving his truck in another state
And that night there were many texts
Between the two of them.
So they had been in contact all night up until the murder.
(atmospheric music) (dates clicking)
We were confident that kevin left for work
At 8:00 pm the night before the murder
And he didn't get back into town until after lisa's death.
So we wanted to know from his perspective
As to if there was any argument going on at the house
Before he left.
I told his lawyer that we would just talk about the work,
But I was hoping that maybe he would open up
And give us some insight as to what was going on
And why the reason that this happened.
- He was looking down,
There was no tears, there was no anger.
- Kevin knoefel was not willing to help the police
In finding out exactly what happened to his wife.
Why is he not cooperating with us?
What is he hiding from us?
(tense music)
(clock ticking)
He was just very muted and just kind of there
Just staring down most of the time.
It could be a sign of him lying,
It could be a sign of nervousness.
It could be that, you know, he didn't wanna be there.
- Kevin refused to answer
And his attorney refused to let him answer.
(clock ticking)
This interview did bring kevin even more as a suspect
At this point,
Just for the pure fact
That he didn't even have a willingness
To want to help the investigators
In his wife's brutal murder.
(atmospheric music)
- Kevin, according to court records,
Faced significant money issues.
He was in debt.
- I would characterize kevin knoefel as money hungry.
Everything that kevin did and thought about was about money.
Kevin knoefel took out
Approximately $750,000 worth of life insurance
On lisa knoefel.
Back in April of that year,
He terminated his own life insurance
And his kids' life insurance,
But kept lisa's life insurance.
- He got more than $750,000 after lisa's death
And he used that
To pay on a previously foreclosed upon house.
He used that to buy a new car,
To take flying lessons.
Records show that he and his mother
Purchased a $225,000 house in summerfield, florida.
Seeing the things that kevin spent his money on,
Talking to friends
Who noticed how cold and indifferent he was
About the murder,
And piecing all these things together,
It really painted a story.
(gentle music)
(dates clicking)
- So a proffer is a good faith first step
When the defense attorney and the prosecution
Meet with the suspect,
It's an opportunity for them to be 100% complete honest
And tell exactly what happened.
It's a first step into a plea agreement.
We cannot use this against her in court.
- As sabrina and kevin's relationship continued,
Sabrina described the increasing tension she felt from lisa,
And that sabrina felt
That she wasn't welcome in the house anymore.
- Lisa being in the field of, you know,
Working for the child and family services
In the sex division,
I think she had a pretty good inkling on what was going on.
- So kevin convinced sabrina
That if she did kill lisa and did get caught,
That she would only do two to five years,
That he would protect her.
And that after she got out that he would be there with her,
They would buy a house,
And basically she can be like a mother figure to hailey.
- Given sabrina's history of feeling abandoned
And essentially struggling her whole life
And feeling like she was no longer struggling,
That brought up great feelings in sabrina,
Feelings that essentially led to the murder.
(atmospheric music)
- That's when we learned that kevin helped plan this murder,
It was calculated,
And essentially kevin using sabrina
To get his wife out of the picture
And to collect life insurance money.
- Before the actual murder,
Another plot was supposed to happen.
They were talking about this hitman.
- Autumn pavlik was sabrina zunich's friend.
They had met at south high school.
Autumn got roped into the murder plot
Because sabrina approached autumn
And asked her if she can get a hitman,
I guess autumn used to live
Down in a different section of town,
Where she was around that kind of activity.
- During this proffer she seemed very honest with us,
She gave good eye contact with us,
There was no delay in between her answers.
She was very direct.
- Sabrina's childhood, I believe,
Is probably the most important thing
To understand why something like this could happen.
Sabrina had never experienced a stable family,
A loving household,
The sense of security, the sense of belonging.
Kevin seemed to know
How to prey on sabrina's vulnerabilities.
(tense music)
(dates clicking)
- Myself and chief assistant prosecutor, karen,
Went out to california and knocked on her door.
We introduced ourselves and she says,
"I've been expecting you guys."
In later October of 2012,
Autumn pavlik actually moved out to california
And that's where she received a phone call
From sabrina zunich
Asking, "are we gonna be able to do this hitman thing?"
We confirmed
That while autumn was on the telephone with sabrina,
Kevin was in the background.
- Deep in autumn's mind,
She said she was never going to actually get the hitman.
She was just trying to push it off.
Hopefully, that she would just not want to do this.
(atmospheric music)
- [autumn] mm hmm.
- We just wanna try to get autumn
To have kevin try to talk about the murder of his wife.
Try to get him to talk about their plan of the hitman
Or of the robbery and of the life insurance policy.
- If somebody's accusing you
Of being involved with something
You know you're not involved,
You know, you would say something like
What are you talking about?
I have no idea what you're talking about.
You're crazy.
- It just, I mean, if somebody's talking about a hitman,
Are you involved in something like that
Or are you not involved in something like that?
It's pretty simple.
(ominous music)
(dates clicking)
- I got an arrest warrant for kevin knoefel.
Early in the morning, we went to kevin knoefel's house
And we arrested him.
I don't think he was surprised.
It was kind of weird
Because he was sleeping up in the bedroom
Where it was sabrina's room.
(tense music)
- Kevin, on a superficial public perception layer,
Seemed like an upstanding person.
You know, he's working hard, taking care of a foster child.
(tense music)
- That's his right.
I mean, his right is to stop,
Not answer any question without an attorney.
(tense music)
We've done the right thing and we had the right person.
Kevin knoefel was 100% involved.
(eerie music)
- A lake county grand jury indicted the man
For plotting to kill lisa with help from his foster child.
But that's not all,
He's also accused of sexual battery
For having a relationship with that child.
(ominous music)
(dates clicking)
- The charges were conspiracy to commit aggravated murder,
Complicity to commit aggravated murder,
And there was multiple sexual battery charges.
- Sabrina explained later that she turned against kevin
Because she felt abandoned by kevin,
Who promised to take care of her after the murders.
She believed her life was gonna be better
After lisa was out of the picture,
But ultimately being in jail on these charges
And feeling abandoned by kevin for not protecting her,
She decided to speak up.
- We have a 44 year-old man with no prior criminal record,
No prior criminal history,
But we also have a 41 year-old woman
Who was a mother to two, a sister to one,
And a wife who was brutally murdered.
(atmospheric music)
- In my opinion, the verdict came very quickly.
The jury came up with a guilty verdict.
I believe it took a matter of about two days.
- We're satisfied
That the likelihood that he's ever gonna get out
Is slim to none,
By the terms of his sentence.
- [reporter] if he's looking to appeal,
Do you think that'll be successful?
- No.
- It felt very gratifying to me
For the long work and hard work that myself,
Our police department, and our prosecutor, and team
Had put into this case.
Kevin knoefel is a sexual predator.
He was no better
Than the people that sexually abused the kids
That lisa was trying to help.
(atmospheric music)
That charge being outlined in the indictment?
- [newsreader] sabrina zunich
Has been sentenced to 30 years in prison
For stabbing her foster mother, lisa knoefel, to death
Earlier this year.
Police said zunich was involved
In a love affair with her stepfather.
She pleaded guilty to a count of aggravated murder.
Her sentence does carry the possibility of parole.
- Sabrina zunich was given a 30-year sentence
And that's when she would be eligible for parole.
So she could do more time,
Kind of depends on her behavior
While she is currently in prison.
- Based on sabrina's upbringing
And based on kevin's grooming,
It kind of felt to me
Like she didn't have control over this,
Because I don't think she learned right from wrong
From the people, the adults in her life.
- I feel bad for sabrina
'cause I think she's also a victim in this case,
Even though she's the main suspect in this case.
But I feel bad that she was taken advantage of
By a grown adult that should know better.
- When you think back to the type of person lisa is,
It just makes it that much worse
To have your life taken by somebody
That you reached out to help,
Is unfathomable to think about.
(atmospheric music)
- When a person dies it has a ripple effect on everybody.
It causes so much pain for their children,
For the people who love lisa,
For the kids who will no longer be helped
'cause lisa's not here.
It causes so much pain when somebody like that dies.