When Trust Becomes a Weapon: The Lisa Knoefel Case
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe Kuner
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lisa Knoefel was asleep in her own bed when everything unraveled. Her foster daughter, Sabrina Zunich, was standing over her with a knife… and it wasn’t random, or sudden, or some spur-of-the-moment break. This had been planned. Encouraged. Groomed. And the person behind it wasn’t just a bystander. It was Lisa’s husband.
This episode walks through how a woman who dedicated her life to helping others was manipulated, betrayed, and murdered by the people she trusted most. We’ll break down the disturbing relationship between a foster father and the teenager he was supposed to protect, the twisted plan that replaced divorce with bloodshed, and the moment it all started to come apart.
There’s no mystery about who committed the murder. But the why, and the person who pulled the strings, tells you a whole lot more than just a motive.
#LisaKnoefel #SabrinaZunich #KevinKnoefel #TrueCrimePodcast #FosterCareMurder #ManipulationAndMurder #RealCrimeStory #10MinuteMurder
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | A mom is stabbed nearly 200 times in her own bed. |
| 0:04.7 | The person holding the knife, her 17-year-old foster daughter. |
| 0:08.6 | But before you go thinking, this is just another case of a troubled teen snapping. |
| 0:13.5 | There's a husband in the background who's been way too involved |
| 0:17.4 | and just happened to take a work trip the night it all went down. Let's talk about |
| 0:22.6 | how it really fell apart. Before we dive in, if you like your true crime brief and bingeable, |
| 0:28.8 | you're in the right place. Hit follow now for at least two new episodes every week. This is |
| 0:33.8 | 10-minute murder. Let's get into it. |
| 0:57.1 | Lisa Knafel was 41 years old, and on the night of November 26, 2012, she was exactly where she should have felt safest, her own bed, trying to get some sleep. No alarm bells, no warning |
| 1:03.7 | signs, just the usual quiet that comes with middle of the night stillness, until it wasn't. |
| 1:10.1 | The bedroom door cracked open, slow, and |
| 1:12.5 | deliberate. Someone stepped inside without saying a word. And what followed, chaos, fast, brutal, |
| 1:20.0 | and horrifying. Lisa woke up fighting for her life. A knife came down on her again and again, |
| 1:27.3 | turning her room into a war zone. She was |
| 1:30.2 | slashed 178 times and stabbed another 12. That's not a typo, by the way. One of the wounds |
| 1:37.8 | blinded her. Two of her fingers were nearly sliced off. Defensive wounds on her arms and hands |
| 1:43.8 | told the story. She tried to fight back, |
| 1:46.7 | twisting, grabbing, shielding herself the way that anyone would when survival mode kicks in. |
| 1:53.0 | She curled in on herself, instinctively protecting the parts of her that mattered most, |
| 1:57.8 | but two of the stab wounds hit fatal targets. One tore through her lung, diaphragm, |
| 2:03.7 | and liver. The other cut straight through her carotid artery. After that, the clock was ticking. |
| 2:09.8 | Just minutes. Lisa never stood a chance. She didn't go quietly. She fought. Hard. But there's no defense for being ambushed in your sleep. |
... |
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