HONOLULU (CN) – When Gerhardt Konig walked off a cliffside trail on Oahu on March 24, 2025, he left his wife Arielle Konig bleeding on the ground behind him, her face covered in gashes, her screams drawing two hikers who would later say they witnessed a man attack her.
But says Gerhardt Konig what happened before that moment proves his innocence.
The 47-year-old anesthesiologist, who faces a charge of second degree attempted murdertook the stand Wednesday and Thursday in Oahu’s First District Court.
He said his wife first pushed him to the edge of the cliff, that she hit him with the rock before he took it from her, and that he only hit her twice in self-defense before stopping himself.
“I felt terrible about what I did to her,” he told jurors. “That I had caused this to him, that I had used violence against my wife, the person I love most in the world.”
According to prosecutors, the Konigs’ marriage had broken down for months before the birthday trip to Oahu. In early December 2024, Gerhardt Konig accessed his wife’s WhatsApp account and discovered that she had frequently exchanged personal messages with Jeffrey Miller, a married co-worker at TerraPower, a nuclear power company in Washington state, where Arielle Konig worked remotely. The relationship, which Arielle Konig previously testified about, never turned physical.
What followed were months of couples therapy and audio books on surviving infidelity. The couple had vowed to give their marriage a chance. Gerhardt Konig booked the trip to Oahu after his wife said she had always wanted to visit the island.
Prosecutors say Gerhardt Konig had been studying Paul Puka’s trail for weeks, a rugged cliff above Nu` uanu Pali Lookout, where he planned to kill him.
Arielle Konig testified last week that her husband grabbed her by the arms and pushed her towards the edge of the ridge. She dropped to the ground, clinging to roots and brush.
She said he stood her up, produced a syringe and told her to stay still. When she took it off, she said, he covered her mouth.
“Nobody’s going to hear you here,” she recalled him saying. “No one is coming to save you.” He then picked up a rock, she said, and began hitting her repeatedly in the head.
“I just started screaming,” she said. “Because in my mind, he was trying to knock me unconscious so he could pull me over the edge.”
But Gerhardt Konig testified that the argument that day flared up when Arielle Konig told him she wanted to resume commuting with Miller. They parted ways. When he came down, she was still there. They took a selfie together. Then, he said, she pushed him from behind, almost sending him over the edge of the cliff.
“I felt, like, a blow, and I almost got pushed over the edge,” he said.
He said he returned to find her already five to ten meters away, so he believed the push had been deliberate. He moved towards her. She pulled him to the ground, wrapped a leg around him and grabbed him by the testicles, he said. She wouldn’t let go.
She picked up the rock and hit him first, making him “kind of good,” he said, before he kicked her away and hit her in self-defense.
However, his account is undermined by the testimony of his son, from a previous marriage.
On Tuesday, Emile Konig, 19, took the stand and told jurors that minutes after the incident, his father contacted him on FaceTime.
“He wasn’t going to go back to Maui and take good care of the younger kids, and that Ari, my stepmother, had cheated on him and that he tried to kill her,” Emile Konig testified about what his father told him.
When Emile Konig asked about the splatters on his father’s shirt, he said Gerhardt Konig told him, “Oh, it’s just her blood.” About an hour later, Gerhardt Konig called again.
“He said he was just going to dance,” Emile Konig said, “and he said it several times.”
Emile Konig said his phone call ended with his father saying, “I’m going before the police catch me.”
Gerhardt Konig contradicted them all. He admitted that the word kill might have come out during the call, but said it wasn’t what it seemed.
“I think I was saying to myself, ‘She said I tried to kill her,'” he told the jury.
He said he had committed suicide, not confessing, and that his son had saved his life by pulling him back from the brink.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joel Garner spent much of Thursday presenting what he described as evidence of premeditation. Beginning on February 28, 2025, Garner walked the jury through Gerhardt Konig’s browsing history: a search for Maui’s secret hike, then the best hikes on Oahu, then a quick turn from YouTube videos of easy hikes to difficult hikes.
He landed on JourneyEra.com, a travel website that described the Pali Puka Trail as putting hikers on the edge of a sheer cliff and told readers, “Does that make it dangerous? You decide.”
Gerhardt Konig admitted that he had read the entire article, looking at pictures of the narrow path along the edge of the cliff and knowing that 99% of visitors to Pali Lookout never set foot on the path.
“This is the ride you wanted to take Arielle on for her birthday, right?” asked Garner.
“Yes,” said Gerhardt Konig.
Garner later placed two side-by-side photos on the courtroom screen: Gerhardt Konig’s face after the incident, showing what appeared to be minor bruising, along with Arielle Konig’s face in the hospital, covered in blood.
“You only say two strikes to Arielle, don’t you?” asked Garner.
“I only hit him twice,” said Gerhardt Konig.
Arielle Konig filed for divorce in May 2025 and is seeking custody of the couple’s two children, ages 3 and 5, as well as the family home and financial damages.
She has admitted that the outcome of this trial is important for that case. Gerhardt Konig has been held in jail since his arrest. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
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