A Hawaii anesthesiologist has been found guilty of trying to kill his wife by bashing her head with a rock during a hike for her birthday last year.
A jury in Honolulu convicted Gerhardt Konig Wednesday on the lesser charge of attempted manslaughter tied to allegations he attacked his wife Arielle Konig after a discussion about her emotional affair with another man while they were traversing the cliff-side Pali Puka trail on Oahu on March 24, 2025.
Gerhardt had been charged with second-degree attempted murder — but the judge gave jurors the option of convicting on a reduced offense before deliberations, which lasted more than eight hours.
The jury, which began deliberations Tuesday afternoon, was instructed that if they could not convict Gerhardt of attempted murder, they could instead consider attempted manslaughter, first-degree attempted assault, or second- or third-degree assault.
Gerhardt, who put his head in his hands when the verdict was read, faces up to 20 years in prison for the charge of attempted manslaughter based on extreme mental or emotional disturbance.
Arielle testified that Gerhardt chillingly said, “F–k you, you’re done” before trying to throw her off a cliff, attempting to inject her with a syringe and eventually picking up a stone and whacking her on her forehead as she lay fighting on the ground.
The 37-year-old mother and nuclear engineer was saved when two women heard the scuffle and intervened, finding Gerhardt straddling a bloodied and screaming Arielle.
During closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutor Joel Garner alleged that Gerhardt wielded the rock “so hard that pieces of rock broke off into Arielle’s scalp.”
“The only thing that got him to stop was being caught red-handed,” Garner argued.
Jurors also heard from Gerhardt, 47, who took the stand in his own defense to claim Arielle started the physical altercation by trying to push him off the cliff as they took a selfie before wrestling him to the ground and hitting him on the head with a rock first. He claimed he hit her back in self-defense.
“She keeps yelling, and she grabs my wrists and throws herself on the ground and pulls me down with her,” testified Konig, according to a report by KHON2. “I’m thrashing, and I get both hands free, and I’m trying to get her to let go of my testicles, and then she hits me with a rock.”
He also claimed he didn’t have a syringe on him at the time.
Defense attorney Thomas Otake accused prosecutors of manufacturing a theory and then selectively gathering evidence to back it up.
“They’re undeterred by the evidence,” he blasted during his closing arguments, claiming the “he said, she said” case is riddled with “reasonable doubt.”
“It doesn’t matter what it shows, they’re going to spin it in their favor. They came up with a theory and they went to search for facts to support it.”
During the three-week trial, prosecutors argued that Gerhardt was lashing out after Arielle informed him that she might have to go on a work trip with Jeff Miller, her co-worker who Gerhardt caught her having an “emotional affair” with.
After Gerhardt broke into Arielle’s phone in December and found three months’ worth of Whatsapp messages with Miller, the pair stopped having sex and tried to save their marriage, according to trial testimony.
Arielle painted a picture of a controlling and needy Gerhardt, who demanded she sleep with him
“every other day,” a request she didn’t want to fulfill.
“Gerhardt really wanted touch, physical touch, a lot of cuddling, and any refusal of that would be me withdrawing,” she testified last month.
Gerhardt’s son and Arielle’s stepson, Emile Konig, also testified as a prosecution witness, claiming his dad called him on FaceTime and confessed what he’d done.
Gerhardt told Emile that Arielle “had been cheating on him and that he tried to kill her,” jurors heard from the son.
Arielle has filed for divorce.
With Post wires
