[projector whirring]
ANNOUNCER 1: Nothing in all the world
is more beautiful than the coast of Hawaii.
ANNOUNCER 2: As you shed your city clothes,
you shed your worries, too.
When I think of Hawaii, I think of paradise.
I think of palm trees.
I think of warm, sandy beaches.
ANNIE ELISE: Pretty sunsets and just beautiful scenery.
[serene music]
ELIZABETH MILLNER: You think of relaxation.
You think of happiness.
[tense music]
You don't think of that as the scene of a crime.
I was saying something like, please
help, he's trying to kill me.
ELIZABETH MILLNER: If you look at the pictures of them
together, they look like a picture-perfect couple.
JONATHAN WATERS: They had everything going for them.
I truly don't understand what happened, other than passion
can make people do strange things.
What started as a beautiful birthday hike turned
into an absolute nightmare.
CALLER: She has blood all over her face.
Sure.
REPORTER 1: The chilling story from Hawaii,
a prominent doctor now charged with the attempted
murder of his wife.
REPORTER 2: 46-year-old anesthesiologist Gerhardt Konig
is in custody this morning.
JONATHAN WATERS: Would it be hard for an anesthesiologist
to commit murder?
I would say no.
The drugs that we have typically are intended to take
you to the edge of death.
ANNIE ELISE: You have this successful couple,
an anesthesiologist and a nuclear engineer.
And then you see all of it go wrong in the blink of an eye.
SUNNY HOSTIN: The first time that we
see Arielle in the courtroom, you can see her injuries.
She has Steri-Strips on her face.
You see redness around her eye.
ANA GARCIA: Here they are, in the middle
of the most violent situation with the most
picturesque backdrop.
It's just a juxtaposition of perfection and beauty
and violence and anger.
ANNIE ELISE: Allegations of attempted murder,
a horrific 911 call, a bloody trail at the scene.
Now, Dr. Gerhardt Konig is on trial
for the attempted murder in the second degree of his wife.
This trial is very much Konig versus Konig.
He's saying, like, fuck you, you're done.
The evidence will show he is falsely
accused of attempted murder.
NANCY GRACE: Is this a case of a murderous, scorned husband
or a calculating, cheating wife?
The two are not mutually exclusive.
This is a story about betrayal,
about love lost, about a couple who
go off on a romantic vacation, and one of them
almost ends up dead.
[bell tolls, theme music]
[wind gusting]
[tense music]
Let's see what today will bring in court.
[engine starting]
The Konig trial is definitely a telenovela.
It's riveting to a lot of people in Hawaii.
And people have been coming to the court
just to hear what's going on firsthand.
In recent memory, the Konig trial
is really shaping up to be one of the more
memorable and noteworthy trials in Hawaii.
People are really, you know, watching with anticipation.
You know, what's going to happen next?
I'm glad I'm in the courtroom to see all of it unfold.
Hi.
Thank you.
[tense music]
PROSECUTING ATTORNEY: The evidence will show
and the state will prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that Dr. Gerhardt Konig consciously, intentionally
made a choice on March 24, 2025, to try to take a life.
He says, I'm not gonna make it back.
I tried to kill Ari, but she got away.
This was an unplanned, unanticipated scuffle
that happened between a couple.
One year ago, they came to Oahu, the Konigs,
to celebrate her birthday.
The day of the incident was her birthday.
And now a year later, on her birthday,
she's in court testifying against her husband
in this murder trial.
NANCY GRACE: We heard about her in opening statements.
She has been the focus of the case from the very beginning.
Yes, I do.
Arielle Konig takes the stand.
You could hear a pin drop.
I was screaming as he's covering my mouth and stuff.
And then we had this moment of, like, he seems
like he takes a deep breath.
And then he just starts hitting my face and my head with a rock.
Hearing from Arielle on the stand filled in so many gaps,
answered so many questions.
And you could see Gerhardt Konig, Dr. Konig,
sitting there on the other side of the courtroom.
ARIELLE KONIG: He's telling me, shut the fuck up.
Nobody's-- nobody's gonna hear you out here.
Nobody's coming to save you.
BRIAN BUCKMIRE: From the very beginning,
this case has been twist after turn,
where two people are pointing the finger at each other.
Is this a case of a husband with medical precision trying
to murder his wife or a wife who engineered this all to try
to get away from her husband?
This case is different in that prosecution and defense,
they agree on a lot of the facts of the case.
They both agree that there was a scuffle.
They both agree that Arielle got injured.
But what they don't agree on is who started the scuffle.
They don't agree on the extent of the injuries.
They don't agree that Arielle was almost killed with a rock.
And so they certainly don't agree on the why, either.
[pensive music]
So let's go back to March 24, 2025.
BRIAN BUCKMIRE: From the outside looking in,
this looks like a power couple, right?
We have an anesthesiologist, you have a nuclear engineer,
and they've got this beautiful, blended family from children
from different marriages.
I have two little kids and then my stepson.
About 6 and 1/2 years.
So from Arielle's point of view
and what's been described in court
filings is that she thought this was just a beautiful weekend
that her husband had planned.
CYNTHIA YIP: Pali Lookout is one of the most
beautiful spots on Oahu.
It is a top destination for tourists and for hikers.
They've got lookouts so you can just grab the vista.
But they're a bit precarious because the drop is so steep.
It's like a 1,200-foot drop at some of the points.
ANNIE ELISE: However, according to the prosecution,
this hike was all a ruse to get Arielle alone for what they
describe as attempted murder.
BRIAN BUCKMIRE: Gerhardt and Arielle
went hiking at this location.
And about five minutes into the hike
is where Gerhardt is supposedly asking Arielle to take photos
or selfies of the two of them.
ELIZABETH MILLNER: From what we know from court filings,
Arielle explains that they were kind of close near the cliff.
She was feeling a little uneasy being
so close to the edge that she just asked her husband, hey,
can we move?
And then things take a turn.
When I walk up to him, then he grabbed me really
forcefully by my upper arms.
And he said, I'm so fucking sick of this shit.
Get back over there.
And he starts pushing me back towards the cliff.
I mean, I was surprised.
It felt almost like he was kidding at first.
And I was like, what are you doing?
But he-- he had grabbed me really hard and was moving me.
So we kind of wrestled a little bit,
and I threw myself onto the ground
because there's a lot of trees and shrubs
there so that I could hold on.
He got on top of me, and he was kind of trying to pull me.
And we were wrestling, and he ended up straddling me.
So he had his legs on either side, kind of across my waist.
About 5' 6".
About 145 pounds.
About 5' 10".
Maybe 160, 165 pounds.
She says he suddenly pulls out a syringe
and starts to try to inject her with something.
Now, she knows that he's an anesthesiologist.
And so she says she's now getting scared.
She's able to kind of fight him off.
She says she's biting his arm to get him to stop,
and she's screaming.
And I see the syringe, and I just kind of, like, bat
it away from-- from us both.
And I'm saying, like, you can't do this.
Everyone knows we're on a hike.
They'll know this wasn't an accident,
and our kids will be orphans.
You'll go to jail, and I'll be dead.
Like, you have to stop.
And again, he's saying, like, you're done.
We're done with you.
We don't need you anymore.
You're done, you're done.
No syringe was found on the mountainside.
No one saw a syringe other than Arielle.
ANA GARCIA: And she says Gerhardt then grabbed a rock,
and she says that he was bashing her head and her face
with this rock.
Calling for help, she's screaming.
I'm not talking once or twice.
But 10 times on the head.
I just started screaming because I--
in my mind, he was trying to knock
me unconscious to get-- to be able to drag me over the edge.
So I just was screaming then as much as I could.
My life and the ability to see my kids again.
And it's at that point in time that she's struggling
and fighting back that two bystanders show up and see
the tail end of this struggle.
[pensive music]
SUNNY HOSTIN: They also feared for their lives
because they were also so close to the cliff.
And so they had to take a few steps back.
By their accounts, this was a very, very
dangerous and scary encounter.
She said, please don't leave me.
He's trying to kill me.
Shortly after, she was crawling towards us.
On her stomach and hands and knees.
I was, but she was covered in blood.
Pretty big gashes on the side of her head.
ANA GARCIA: I really believe that if these two women had not
come along, there's a strong likelihood
that something terrible, even worse
would have happened to Arielle.
When the 911 call was played, you could see that people
were even more attentive.
What we had just seen, that we saw a woman beat that was--
said that she was being attacked.
Yes.
Approximately 30 seconds.
It was like a cold, emotionless stare.
BRIAN BUCKMIRE: According to the bystanders,
they see Gerhardt turning around and then walking
further up the mountain.
The prosecution is really hammering
home that Gerhardt tried to murder Arielle multiple times.
First, he tries to lure her to the edge of a cliff
and push her off.
Then he tries to inject her with a syringe.
And three, by trying to bash her head in with a rock.
Authorities describe her condition
after this incident as critical and taken
to a hospital for treatment.
ELIZABETH MILLNER: What we know from court filings,
according to Arielle Konig, is that Dr. Gerhardt Konig
allegedly called Arielle Konig's stepson, Dr. Gerhardt's son
from his first marriage, and he might have allegedly confessed.
According to court documents, he says to him,
I just tried to kill Ari, and indicates
that he's now going to kill himself
by jumping off the cliff.
The defendant told Emil that he
was turning his phone off so the police couldn't find him.
I think that's when he really broke down.
That's the only time I really saw him emotionally break down.
I mean, who knows what he's going through as far as his mind
when he's sitting there?
BRIAN BUCKMIRE: There becomes this multi-law enforcement
search for Gerhardt, not for just
a couple minutes or a couple of hours, but for eight hours.
DAN ABRAMS: They find Gerhardt walking
down this enormous mountain.
After a brief foot chase, he's apprehended.
Shortly after, she not only filed a restraining order
to protect herself and her two sons,
but she also filed for divorce from Gerhardt.
People love to say that they were the perfect couple,
and no one had any idea.
And often-- and maybe in this case--
what that means is they looked very nice together.
But the reality is, there were a lot
of problems brewing in this relationship
before this happened.
[grim music]
ELIZABETH MILLNER: Prior to the March 2025 incident,
there was a lot of tension between Arielle Konig
and her husband, Dr. Gerhardt Konig.
And we know from court filings is that Dr. Gerhardt Konig had
actually accused his wife of having
an inappropriate relationship with another colleague.
CYNTHIA YIP: Gerhardt says he finds these text messages
between Arielle and a colleague that she
described as sometimes flirty.
I-- I was apologetic.
You know, he was obviously hurt.
And I was really committed to my marriage and my husband.
And so we agreed to work through it and try to, you know,
kind of rebuild because I had definitely broken his trust.
And I could tell he was hurt.
It felt like an affair to him.
So that's he called it, an emotional affair.
Emotional affair is the word, yeah.
Gerhardt was gutted by the notion
that his wife could be having an affair.
He was destroyed by it.
You could see based on court filings that kind of reveal,
what he was looking for at the time.
He's downloading books, he's listening to audio books, all,
like, these self-help books about how
to get your relationship back.
He's researching on Reddit what to do
if you find out that your wife has been cheating on you.
According to Arielle, after Gerhardt
suspects that she's having an affair,
he starts trying to control her.
Gerhardt would kind of go through my stuff
at the end of the day to see, you know, what I was doing,
so if I was sending emails or who I was meeting with.
At the time, Gerhardt kind of expected
to have sex every other day.
December 24 that year.
That's right.
No.
We did a lot of work on our relationship, yeah.
We both were doing individual and couples therapy.
[poignant music]
JONATHAN WATERS: So what do I think about doctors
that had gone bad?
I don't think we're any different than any other people.
Oh, I think we certainly have the background and the education
to know how to kill somebody.
That's-- [laughs] you know, as an anesthesiologist,
you certainly have access to the drugs that can do it quickly.
My name is Jonathan Waters.
I was the chief of Anesthesia Services
at Magee-Womens Hospital, where Gerhardt
did his residency fellowship.
My initial impression of Gerhardt was, I mean,
he's a good-looking guy.
He's pleasant, soft-spoken, very bright, generally likable.
I mean, I-- he was a good guy.
He was pretty excited when he first met Arielle.
She was anything any guy could possibly dream about.
She was gorgeous.
She was smart.
She was a nuclear engineer.
She's very pleasant to interact with.
He was overjoyed, I think, when he met her.
And I think he was a bit surprised that she
had any interest in him.
When you think about her, she's the ultimate trophy wife.
It's like, where is he ever going to find
another woman this fantastic?
JONATHAN WATERS: You know, it was not like I
viewed him as being a saint.
I never saw Gerhardt have a temper or lose his temper.
The last time I saw him and her was
after she delivered their baby.
And it seemed like a happy environment, nothing that
would lead you to believe to what was
going to happen in the future.
[curious music]
Mr. Otake, are you ready to present the defendant's
opening statement?
I am, Your Honor.
This is a long, complex, human story.
And I'm going to walk you through all the details of it
this morning.
However, the evidence will show that this story,
this human story, can be summarized best in three words,
just in summary, three words--
unfaithful, unwilling, and untrue.
SUNNY HOSTIN: Central to this case
is the allegation that Arielle was having
an affair with her coworker.
And it's important to both sides here.
It's important to the prosecution,
and it's important to the defense.
So the defense is basically saying, look, she doesn't
want to be married to Gerhardt.
She is the one maybe that picked the fight
on the lookout that day.
On the trail, they start talking
about the progress they're making and things like that.
And she says, hey, you know, I need
you to start trusting me more.
You know, it's been a while.
I-- you know, we've made progress.
I gotta be able to travel for work.
And a part of that will include
working with her ex-lover.
And that is what starts the argument.
[grim music]
SUNNY HOSTIN: The defense is arguing that she's the one that
starts hitting him with the rock,
and that he reflexively takes the rock from her
and hits her back.
He claims that he hits her in self-defense, that she
started the whole thing.
Medically speaking, from the medical doctors in this case,
it's not as bad as it looks.
She never loses consciousness.
No risk of death from the injuries.
Stitched up, went home the next day.
And it was a rock.
He hit her with a rock in response to him--
her hitting him.
He's stunned about what happened.
He's in shock.
They-- he doesn't go after them.
They go down.
And he immediately goes into almost a despondent state.
He
Realizes his marriage is over.
He realizes-- she's yelling to them, call the police,
he's trying to kill me.
He realizes his career could very well be over.
He saw that she was hurt.
And you hear he was disappointed.
He was remorseful.
He was upset about the whole incident.
He never wanted it to come to that.
ANNIE ELISE: The defense tried to poke holes in the testimony
of the two hikers.
They argued that these hikers don't have the whole picture,
that they didn't see the altercation,
that they only saw a moment in time
and heard Arielle's version of the story.
Did you pick the wrong person out of the photo lineup
initially?
SARAH BUCHSBAUM: Yes.
Correct.
NANCY GRACE: At the get-go, the defense
is between a rock and a hard spot
here because there are witnesses that
see their client on top of Arielle,
beating her in the head with a rock.
So what can they do?
They're claiming self-defense.
They're basically claiming, nanny-nanny boo-boo,
she started it.
And I finished it.
CYNTHIA YIP: When the defense attorney got his moment
to cross-examine Arielle, he really
pressed her on this emotional affair, as she called it.
That's right.
I did delete a lot of messages.
That's correct.
It was for Gerhardt specifically.
But, yes, that's correct.
CYNTHIA YIP: And then a bombshell--
the defense brought up a surprising piece of information,
an email she sent to her doctor.
Yes, sir.
Correct, that was the purpose of the email.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I apologize.
For her notes for the 31st, that's correct.
I-- I'm not aware.
[curious music]
Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialously,
with me, your host, Annie Elise.
When I first covered this case on my podcast,
everybody wanted to know how something like this could
happen, how a trusted anesthesiologist could
potentially be responsible for trying to murder
his young 36-year-old wife.
This one is a wild one.
I know a lot of you have been following it.
This case has also taken social media by storm.
He tried to push her off.
He should be in prison serving a life sentence.
ANNIE ELISE: Out of all of the cases that I've covered,
this one is difficult to forget because while it does look
like it's a clear-cut case on the surface,
there is so much we don't know.
Thank you so much for tuning in to another case with me.
I will be back on the mic with you first thing Monday morning.
But until then, be nice.
Don't kill people.
[grim music]
CYNTHIA YIP: This is a very complicated case.
The jurors are going to have to make
this very difficult decision.
BRIAN BUCKMIRE: If convicted, Gerhardt
is facing life in prison with the possibility of parole,
creating this very large window for how many years in prison
he could actually face.
You know, doctors swear to do no harm in their practice
when they care for people.
Stories like this one make everybody
question themselves of, do I really
know who I'm sleeping next to?
Do I know who I'm married to?
Could this happen to me?
I have been asked, why are people so
interested in the Konig case?
Well, it goes back to time immemorial,
to Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the first murder.
People are captivated by what they don't understand.
They try to make logic out of an illogical situation,
and they can't.
That's the fascination.
[grim music]
[theme music]
[audio logo]