What Happened Between Arielle and Gerhardt Konig?
Arielle and Gerhardt have been married since 2018 and have two young sons together; Gerhardt also has two older children from a previous marriage. The family moved to Maui in 2023.
In late 2024, Arielle began having an emotional affair with a male co-worker at her job as a nuclear engineer. Though the relationship never became physical, Gerhardt was upset when he learned of the relationship.
Dominique Oster, a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that emotional affairs are often “just as painful and just as disruptive as a physical affair.”
“When your attention is shifted from your partner to someone else without their consent, that can feel like a betrayal,” she adds.
The couple went to counseling together for several months, trying to salvage their marriage. They were still repairing their relationship in March 2025, when they took a trip to O’ahu to celebrate Arielle’s 36th birthday, leaving their kids at home in Maui with a nanny and family. On the morning of the hike, Gerhardt, then 46, gave Arielle a heart-shaped birthday card that described her as “the heart of our family.”
“I teared up when I read it,” Arielle later testified. “I felt hopeful that this was a turning point for us in our marriage and that this was going to be a nice trip and the start of the next chapter for us.”
But the rest of the getaway didn’t unfold as she had expected. According to Arielle, the trouble began after Gerhardt suggested they take a selfie together near the edge of the Pali Puka trail, a short route that traverses a ridgeline, with steep dropoffs on either side.
“When I walked up to him, he grabbed me really forcefully by my upper arms, and he said, ‘I’m so f------ sick of this s---, get back over there.’ He starts pushing me back towards the cliff,” she testified.
Terrified that Gerhardt would fling her off the edge, Arielle grabbed onto nearby trees and shrubs. Suddenly, she found Gerhardt looming over her, with his legs on either side of her waist. He had a syringe in his hand, she testified.
When Arielle realized what he was holding, she knocked it to the ground. Then, she said, she noticed Gerhardt was holding a vial of liquid. She screamed and struggled to free herself, biting Gerhardt’s forearm and squeezing his testicles. Gerhardt picked up a rock and repeatedly hit her in the head.
“He’s saying, ‘Shut the f--- up. Nobody is going to hear you out here. Nobody is coming to save you,’” she testified. “...He’s saying, ‘You’re done, we don’t need you anymore.’”
Two nearby hikers heard the commotion and approached the couple. They called 911 and helped get Arielle to safety. Gerhardt, meanwhile, fled the scene. He called his 19-year-old son, Emile, on FaceTime and told Emile he’d tried to kill Arielle, according to Emile’s testimony.
Gerhardt hid on the mountain for more than six hours before police took him into custody. A week later, a grand jury indicted him on a second-degree attempted murder charge. He maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty.
After the incident, Arielle spent the night in the hospital, where doctors stitched up the wounds on her scalp and face. She filed for divorce a little more than a month later.
Gerhardt Konig’s Attempted Murder Trial
At Gerhardt’s trial in March 2026, prosecutors alleged Gerhardt intended to kill Arielle on the trail and had even come up with backup methods if his initial approach didn’t work.
“Plan A was the push. The intent was to kill,” prosecutor Joel Garner told the jury. “When Plan A didn’t work, the defendant moved on to Plan B. Plan B: inject her with the syringe, knock her out, push her off the cliff. The intent behind Plan B was to kill. Plan C: when the first two plans didn’t work, beat her with the rock, knock her out, drag her over or simply kill her outright.”
Defense attorneys, however, argued that it was Arielle who had struck Gerhardt with the rock first, and that he had only hit her back twice in an attempt to defend himself. They pointed out that no syringes were recovered from the scene, and suggested Arielle had concocted the whole scenario so she would come out on top in the divorce. Gerhardt testified that, after the scuffle, he had remained on the trail because he felt hopeless and suicidal. He told jurors he had called his 19-year-old son to tell him goodbye.
Jurors deliberated for more than eight hours before finding Gerhardt guilty of attempted manslaughter based on extreme mental or emotional disturbance. Though Gerhardt had been charged with second-degree attempted murder, jurors were instructed to also consider other possible charges.
Makalapua Atkins, the jury foreperson, later explained that jurors believed Gerhardt had acted under the influence of an extreme emotional disturbance based on Arielle’s emotional affair.
“We didn’t feel the evidence would uphold the fact that he intended on murdering her,” Atkins told NBC News.
Criminal defense and civil litigation attorney Brett Rosen tells A&E Crime + Investigation he was impressed by how the defense handled “an incredibly difficult fact pattern.”
“When you have a client who admits to hitting his wife with a lava rock and eyewitnesses who heard screams and saw him doing it, you are playing with a very tough hand,” he adds.
But rather than denying the allegations, he says, the defense humanized Gerhardt by leaning into his devastation over his wife’s affair.
“[Their strategy] was not necessarily about securing a full acquittal,” he says, “it was about saving him from a life sentence… [The outcome] was a massive strategic victory for the defense.”
Rosen says he also wasn’t surprised the case attracted such widespread attention.
“It has all the elements of a true-crime thriller,” he says. “You have a wealthy, successful anesthesiologist from Maui, a beautiful scenic cliffside overlooking Honolulu, a secret emotional affair with a coworker and a brutal physical confrontation. It shatters the public illusion of the ‘perfect’ professional family.”
Gerhardt Konig Requests New Trial
Gerhardt is scheduled for sentencing in August 2026 and faces up to 20 years in prison. However, he continues to fight for his innocence. In May 2026, his attorney filed a motion requesting a new trial.
“While we remain grateful that Dr. Konig was not convicted of attempted murder, statements by certain jurors after the verdict demonstrate that he should not have been convicted of attempted manslaughter either,” Thomas Otake, Gerhardt’s attorney, told KHON2. “Instructions on the law given to the jury can be very confusing, and these things happen from time to time. But now that the problems with the verdict have come to light, this motion provides the Court with an opportunity to prevent an unjust result.”
