Gerhardt Konig told a Hawaii jury this week he was devastated when he discovered messages that seemed to show his wife was having an affair with a colleague.
The former UPMC anesthesiologist, who used to live in Mt. Lebanon, is facing attempted murder charges. His wife, Arielle Konig, last week testified in an Oahu courtroom that her husband forcibly grabbed her by the arm, pushed her toward a cliff and tried to inject her with a syringe.
Gerhardt Konig, 47, was arrested last March after authorities in Hawaii say he repeatedly struck his wife in the head with a rock and attempted to shove her off a steep cliff during a hike to Nu’uanu Pali Lookout.
Konig in court recalled first suspecting that something was amiss in his relationship the year before the alleged murder attempt.
In August 2024, Konig said, his wife traveled from their Maui home to South Africa for a two-night work trip.
“The one weird thing was I remember the second night, I remember noticing that she never contacted me at the end of the day,” Konig said Wednesday in testimony broadcast on Court TV. “That’s kind of out of character.”
When he later asked her why she hadn’t gotten in touch, Konig said his wife told him they had gotten back late from a dinner.
Konig again grew suspicious something was awry during a family trip that October.
Arielle had taken time off work but needed to participate in a few meetings. Konig said he overheard her talking with a coworker who had been on the South Africa business trip, a man Konig identified someone “high up in the company” where his wife worked.
“It just seemed they had a very familiar tone, more so than what I was used to,” he said.
Konig said his spouse also spent more time than usual on the phone. He believed she was hiding her screen from him.
Konig said he was curious and growing concerned. When he asked her about her behavior, he said, Arielle got “defensive about it.”
One December evening, Konig decided to unlock his wife’s phone while she was sleeping, hoping to get to the bottom of the behavior he had found so concerning over the past few months. Her iPhone showed she was using WhatsApp more than any other application.
When Konig opened her WhatsApp account, he discovered two conversations with the coworker — one with his work phone, one with his personal number.
As he combed through the conversation his wife had had with the account linked to her coworker’s personal number, Konig said he found “full-on conversation the entire day long” from the prior two days. He scrolled through good morning texts, messages his wife sent about what she was doing throughout the day and photos of the coworker.
He also saw fragments of conversations that appeared to have been deleted.
“I was devastated,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Konig saved some of the messages to his own phone. He also logged into his wife’s account on his computer, where he could track her WhatsApp messages.
As Konig monitored his wife’s WhatsApp account the following day, he saw her deleting messages and texting with the coworker, he testified.
The messages weren’t the type he expected to see her having with a colleague.
“This is a conversation you’d have with a spouse,” he said. “She was having an affair.”
At the time, Arielle was packing to leave for a couples trip they were taking that week. The plan, Konig said, was for the women to leave the following day, with the men arriving a day later.
The day his wife departed for the trip, he said, he kept tabs on her WhatsApp account. She called, texted and sent photos to the coworker, he testified.
Konig said he intended to confront her on their trip.
Prior to the alleged affair, Konig said, he had no indications that things were amiss in his marriage.
“Everything seemed fabulous,” he said. “We were very happy together, no red flags in terms of the marriage itself.”
The pair moved from Pennsylvania to Hawaii — where Konig worked for Anesthesia Medical Group and Maui Memorial Medical Center — about three years ago.
The relationship took a turn for the worse between then and Konig’s arrest.
In a restraining-order petition, Arielle Konig wrote that her husband accused her of an affair, leading to “extreme jealousy.” She said that he “attempted to control and monitor all of my communications.”
The couple had been seeing therapists when Konig suggested a weekend getaway to Oahu to celebrate his wife’s 36th birthday. That’s when officials allege he tried to kill her.
Arielle Konig filed for a divorce two months after the attack.