CRIME HUNTER: Did teen temptress' sex trysts with foster dad lead to murder?

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The teenage girl was undoubtedly troubled.

But she was getting good grades in high school, always the benchmark for many parents.

Still, to Lisa Knoefel, 41, a social worker in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, something unnerving was happening in her home.

Sabrina Zunich, 17, was the product of a dope-fueled relationship between her junkie parents. She was born in Cleveland but raised by her grandmother. Zunich was diagnosed with ADHD when she was four years old and also suffered from oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder.

High school was one fight after another, punctuated by trips to group homes and multiple foster homes.

When she was 16, Zunich was placed in the home of Kevin and Lisa Knoefel, in suburban Willoughby Hills. She was a social worker, and he was a truck driver. Lisa had a daughter, Megan, from her first marriage and the couple had another toddler daughter, Hailey, together.

Zunich fit in well and became an older sister to the girls. But by December 2011, trouble was brewing in the home. Mostly between Lisa and the teenager. Sabrina turned to Kevin.

“They were too friendly. They were too close. They would make sexual jokes towards each other,” Zunich’s friend Autumn Pavlik told Oxygen.

In the spring of 2012, their relationship shifted to overdrive. It started with the teen rubbing her foster father’s inner thighs, quickly moving to touching his genitals and masturbating him. By that summer, oral and vaginal sex were added to the menu.

Lisa and Kevin’s marriage was falling apart. Kevin told pals a divorce might be on the horizon.

“She [Sabrina] asked me if I was able to get her a hit man,” Pavlik later said. “She said that they [Kevin and Lisa] were going to get a divorce, and she was worth more dead than alive.”

And the cowardly lothario had a plan. Lisa had $1.1 million in life insurance policies. With that kind of dough, the teen and the creep could build a new life together with Hailey. Kevin even dared to ask a social worker if Sabrina could stay with him if he divorced his wife.

By October, when Sabrina turned 18, Lisa had become deeply suspicious of her husband and the teen temptress. Sabrina later bluntly said, “She wanted me out.” The sordid situation was building to a climax.

On Nov. 15, 2012, Kevin drove Sabrina to school as always. The teen and her groomer had sex nearly every day during these jaunts. But on this morning, he began crying and claimed he had a horrendous fight with his wife, and he would commit suicide if she didn’t die.

“I was scared for him because I had fallen in love with him,” Zunich later said, adding she told her paramour that she would kill Lisa.

And on Nov. 16, 2012, the temperamental teen did just that. Cops received a call from Megan, 13, saying her sister was stabbing their mother. Officers found Sabrina, soaked in blood and holding a 15-inch knife in her hand.

Lisa Knoefel was dead in the master bedroom. An autopsy revealed she had been stabbed 178 times in the head, neck, torso, and extremities. The assault had been so violent, the knife had bent, and Sabrina herself had been injured in the attack.

Sabrina refused to answer questions from detectives.

Kevin was on the road and police notified him of the horrific tragedy. But to keen-eyed detectives, he seemed calm and emotionless. He was curious about the savage attack. He also tried to visit Sabrina in the slammer and was furious when his request was denied.

The months passed, and Kevin got his big insurance payout. He paid off the house, bought new cars and a pad in Florida while Sabrina rotted in the county jail. In August 2013, she flipped and spilled her guts to homicide detectives.

Kevin Knoefel had groomed the teen for sex, then for murder. After tutoring the teen on which knife to use and how to make it look like a robbery, he made sure he was nowhere near the crime scene when the slaughter took place.

Cops quickly indicted Kevin and charged him with conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and complicity to aggravated murder as well as six counts of sexual battery. The prosecution’s star witness would be Sabrina Zunich,

Kevin Knoefel went on trial in May 2014, and a jury found him guilty on all 11 counts. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 30 years. He will be 73 years old.

Sabrina pleaded guilty to aggravated murder that August.

“The gruesome, shocking, revolting nature of this crime ranks among the worst I have ever seen in my many years on this bench,” Judge Richard Collins Jr. said in a video taken by WKYC-TV.

She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years. Zunich will be first eligible for parole in 2042, when she will be 47.

Wiping tears from her eyes, Zunich apologized for her actions, saying that her foster mom “did not deserve what happened to her.”

Now, it’s time for a break. See you in a few weeks.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun