The Hawaii doctor charged with trying to kill his wife during an Oahu birthday hike last year was convicted Wednesday of attempted manslaughter based upon extreme mental or emotional disturbance.
The unanimous verdict came after the Honolulu County jury deliberated for more than eight hours. It did not convict Dr. Gerhardt Konig on the higher charge of second-degree attempted murder.
Konig closed his eyes and bowed his head when the verdict was read. When he sat down, he covered his face with his hand and his attorney put a consoling arm on his shoulder.
He faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced Aug. 13. Konig will be held at the O’ahu Community Correctional Center until sentencing.
The conviction caps a roughly three-week trial during which Konig and Arielle Konig offered sharply contrasting accounts of the events of March 24, 2025 — her birthday.
After the verdict outside the courtroom, the doctor's defense attorney said, “We look forward to appealing.”
“We are thankful that they did not convict him of attempted murder, which would have been life in prison,” Thomas Otake said, thanking the jury.
Makalapua Atkins, the jury foreperson, told NBC News that jury members were helpful to one another and ultimately convicted Konig on the lesser charge of manslaughter because, "we didn’t feel the evidence would uphold the fact that he intended on murdering her."
Prosecuting attorney Steve Alm called Wednesday's verdict "a good day for the good guys” and thanked the jury, Arielle Konig, the witnesses who helped her and investigators in a written statement.
In his closing argument, prosecutor Joel Garner said Gerhardt Konig was "obsessed" with his wife's emotional affair with a co-worker when he tried to shove her from a cliff on the Pali Puka Trail, northeast of Honolulu.
When that failed, Garner said, he tried to stab her with a syringe and bashed her head with a rock. The attack ended when two hikers came upon the scene, he said.
“The only thing that got him to stop was being caught red-handed,” Garner said.
Otake described the allegations as “she said, he said” and a “theory in search of facts.” On the stand, Gerhardt Konig denied trying to push Arielle Konig or inject her with a syringe and said he acted in self-defense, striking her with a rock after she tried to push him from the trail.
“He had a reflex,” Otake said in his closing argument. “He reacted, and then he felt horrible about it.”
The attack occurred three months after Gerhardt Konig discovered his wife had been having the emotional affair. They’d gone to counseling, Arielle Konig testified, and appeared to be mending the damage she said she’d caused to their relationship.
Gerhardt Konig testified that he was “devastated” by the affair. He accused his wife of minimizing the breach and refusing to take accountability for it.
The husband and wife, who married in 2018, each testified about what happened during the hike.
Arielle Konig said the incident occurred after her husband asked her to pose for a cliffside selfie. She became nervous about the photo’s location, she said, and when she tried to move past him, he grabbed her by the arm and pushed her back.
A struggle ensued, Arielle Konig said, and her husband — an anesthesiologist — came at her with a syringe and told her to hold still.
She batted it away, she said, and after he briefly appeared to calm down, he began bashing her head with a rock.
“‘Nobody’s going to hear you out here,’” she recalled him saying. "'Nobody’s coming to save you.'"
Other hikers on the trail called 911 and said they saw a man trying to kill a woman, according to audio of the call presented in court. Police body camera video played during the proceedings showed the women assisting Arielle Konig, whose face was covered in blood.
An emergency doctor who tended to Arielle Konig testified that she sustained a skull laceration that reached the bone. Pieces of rock were embedded in the wound, he said.
The defendant took the stand for two days, telling the jury that the altercation happened after he and his wife had an argument about the co-worker with whom she had the affair.
Arielle Konig tried to push him from the cliff, Gerhardt Konig said. She pulled him to the ground, grabbing his testicles and striking him hard in the face with a rock, he testified.
Gerhardt Konig said he wrestled the rock away from his wife and hit her with it twice.
A pathologist who testified for the defense described Arielle Konig’s wound as a “soft-tissue injury” that did not cause a bone fracture or bleeding around the brain. “This is not a life-threatening injury,” said the pathologist, Dr. Jonathan Arden.
Gerhardt Konig denied trying to inject her with a syringe and said that while he felt horrible about what he did, he'd acted in self-defense.
Afterward, he called his son and said he planned to take his own life. During the call, Emile Konig testified, his father told him that his wife was cheating on him and that he'd tried to kill her.
Gerhardt Konig disputed part of that claim in his testimony, saying the word "kill" may have been used but that he didn't mean it as a confession.
He was arrested nearly eight hours later, Garner said, after authorities launched a manhunt. Gerhardt Konig testified that he decided to turn himself in.
