The Doctor Accused of Trying to Push His Wife Over a Cliff: 'My Husband Is Trying to Kill Me'

Even by Hawaiian standards, the scenic trail at Oahu’s Nu‘uanu Pali Lookout—where more than 400 warriors were forced to jump to their deaths from the 1,200-ft. cliff during a battle in 1795—is hauntingly beautiful.

On March 24 the tranquility of the gurgling streams and bamboo forest was interrupted when a pair of hikers heard someone screaming, “Help! Help me!”

Concerned that another hiker was about to fall off the side of the mountain, the duo told police they sprinted up the trail to the overlook to find a woman lying on her back with a man on top of her, violently bashing her in the head with a rock.

“He is trying to kill me,” the woman shouted when she saw the hikers, who called 911. By the time officers from the Honolulu Police Department and paramedics arrived and rushed the bloodied young woman to Queen’s Medical Center, the man with the rock had fled into the forest. Before long, police were piecing together the disturbing details of what Hawaiian prosecutors now say unfolded after 46-year-old anesthesiologist Gerhardt Konig attempted “to push [Arielle Konig, his 36-year-old wife] off a cliff” when she refused to take a selfie with him at the edge of the towering overlook. Arielle’s refusal, according to police reports, sent the father of four—who was arrested six hours later after a manhunt and is now being held without bail—into a murderous rage.

“Domestic abuse cannot be tolerated,” Honolulu County prosecutor Steve Alm said in a March 28 statement after a grand jury indicted Gerhardt on charges of second-degree attempted murder. Gerhardt has pleaded not guilty.

His arrest left those who know the doctor, described by one friend as a “nice, normal, down-to-earth guy,” in a state of confusion. “It doesn’t make any sense,” says a physician who met Gerhardt when they attended the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “It makes me wonder if psychologically something was going on—none of this sounds like the person I knew.”

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By all accounts the couple—who have two young children, Olin, 4, and Viggo, 2, and were wed in 2018 after Gerhardt’s first marriage ended in divorce—jumped at the opportunity to move to Maui for work in 2022. “Gerhardt figured it would be a dream job,” recalls Ben Brown, the couple’s former neighbor in Pittsburgh. They settled into a five-bedroom, $1.5 million home in a gated community in the foothills of the West Maui Mountains, minutes away from Gerhardt’s job at Maui Memorial Medical Center in Wailuku.

Arielle worked at home, juggling her nuclear engineering job with caring for their kids. “They were such a nice couple,” recalls Maui neighbor Primo Layugan, who says the Konigs seemed to enjoy the quiet seclusion of the neighborhood. “They were always smiling and happy. Every time we passed by their house they were playing with their kids.”

Gerhardt was known for hosting whiskey-tasting nights at the house, where he would serve varieties of bourbon and scotch to guests who paid a nominal fee. Arielle would serve a charcuterie plate, then go to her parents’ house down the street, says one attendee, adding: “He seemed like a normal dude.”

Their marriage, however, was turned upside down last December when Gerhardt accused his wife of having an affair, according to a petition for a protective order that Arielle filed in family court days after the cliffside attack. This led to “extreme jealousy on his part,” she wrote, adding that in addition to “sexually abusing and assaulting” her, he began attempting to “control and monitor all of my communications.”

The Konigs were seeing a couples counselor when they decided to take a 45-minute flight to Oahu on March 23 to celebrate Arielle’s 36th birthday, leaving their sons behind in Maui with family and a nanny. The next morning, at Gerhardt’s suggestion, they drove from their hotel in Waikiki to Oahu’s famous Nu‘uanu Pali Lookout.

The hike, which follows a narrow ridge with perilous drop-offs on both sides, quickly made Arielle “uneasy,” she wrote in the court filing. Gerhardt proposed taking a selfie on the lip of the cliff, but when Arielle told him she was feeling “dizzy” and moved along the trail, she claims he grabbed her and pushed her back to the edge. “I’m so f—ing sick of you,” her husband shouted as he tried to push her, Arielle claimed in court documents.

In self-protection, Arielle says, she threw herself on the ground while Gerhardt jumped on top of her, then grabbed a syringe containing “an unknown substance” and attempted to inject her with it. During the struggle she managed to grab the syringe from his hand and toss it out of reach, according to the court papers, but quickly realized he was clutching a vial of some sort of medicine in his other hand and reaching into his bag “for what I believe was a second syringe.”

Moments later Gerhardt allegedly grabbed a rock and began slamming it against her head and face, then sprinted up the trail when the two hikers came upon them and shouted that they were calling 911. During the manhunt that followed, Arielle says, Gerhardt, who was covered in blood, FaceTimed his 19-year-old son from his first marriage, Emile, and allegedly told him, “I just tried to kill Ari, but she got away,” and that he was contemplating jumping off of the cliff.

In the days since the shocking attack, Arielle—who spent nearly a week in the hospital in serious but stable condition from the severe lacerations she received to her face and scalp—is back at the couple’s home in Maui and being looked after by her family. “She’s doing well, but her recovery is slow,” says a friend. “We all just hope she gets better and is able to move on.” In the meantime those who know the couple are left grappling with the question of how this nightmare could have happened. “It’s really tragic,” says Brown, the Konigs’ former Pittsburgh neighbor. “So many lives have been changed for the worse. I feel so bad for her and the kids. I even feel bad for Gerhardt, because his life is pretty much over.”

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.