Twisted reason ‘extremely jealous’ top doctor ‘tried to kill’ engineer wife on Hawaii hiking trail and his bombshell phone call to son

A prominent doctor believed his nuclear engineer wife was having an affair in the months before he allegedly tried to kill her by pushing her off a Hawaiian hiking trail. 

Gerhardt Konig, 46, has been accused of brutally attacking his wife of six years, Arielle Konig, 36, atop the scenic Pali Lookout in Oahu last week and leaving her in serious condition with ‘multiple lacerations to her face and neck’ and a broken thumb.

As she continued to recover at The Queen’s Medical Center with her mother by her side, Arielle filed a damning restraining order against her husband on Thursday.

It states Gerhardt, a renowned anesthesiologist, accused her of cheating on him in December, and ever since, he had become prone to ‘extreme jealousy’ and even ‘attempted to control and monitor all of my communications,’ the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. 

They tried to settle their differences at couple’s therapy, the petition says, and things were looking up when Gerhardt planned a weekend getaway to Oahu for Arielle’s 36th birthday.

Following his arrest, Arielle said she learned her husband had called one of his adult children from a previous marriage on FaceTime.

He was allegedly covered in blood and told his son, “I just tried to kill Ari, but she got away,”‘ according to the petition.

Gerhardt had apparently become very jealous of his wife in the months before the attack

Arielle’s petition was ultimately granted on Friday forbidding Gerhardt from having any contact with his wife or their children and from entering their Maui home. 

It came as the doctor was officially indicted on second-degree attempted murder charges, Hawaii News Now reports. 

He is now being held without bail at the Oahu Community Correctional Center in Honolulu and is due back in court on Monday, while Arielle is ‘focusing on her recovery at home in Maui with the support of her family,’ her attorney said.

Many who knew the couple were shocked by the news of Gerhardt’s arrest.

‘I just did not see this coming,’ Christina Ferguson, 53, who has been working for the couple as a cleaner for the last six months, told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

‘Nobody saw this coming. People are saying things like, “she probably had an affair, or she was cheating”, but she’s not like that at all.

‘She’s the kindest, most caring, patient, generous, loving person. I mean, every perfect attribute you could think of for a person, and that’s her,’ the cleaner said.

‘She worked from home, so she was not running around. And they just came back from a family vacation, just last month.’ 

Arielle, a nuclear scientist, filed a petition for a temporary restraining order from her husband

Many who knew the couple were left shocked by the allegations

Ferguson went on to describe the doctor as ‘nice and kind.’

‘Usually, he was quiet when he was home because typically, he’d be at work when I was there,’ Ferguson said. ‘But the couple times that he was there, he was quiet, polite, and carried a conversation.’

She added: ‘The way that they talked to each other was admirable. They were loving and so this just came completely out of nowhere.

‘Typically, especially here in Hawaii where domestic violence is very common, you can see the signs – there’s controlling behavior and whatnot. 

‘There was none of that here.’

Arielle’s petition for a temporary restraining order, though, tells a different story – as she claims she is afraid for herself, their children and their dog if Gerhardt was to be released on bail.

She described how she and her husband arrived on the island on March 23, while their children stayed at their $1.5million home in Kahului on the island of Maui with family members.

The next day, Arielle says her husband suggested they hike a trail near Pali Lookout, which she described as having ‘narrow ridge sections with steep drop-offs on both sides.’

At one point during the hike, Arielle said she became ‘uneasy’ and said she did not want to go any further. She instead decided to climb a nearby tree so her husband could take a photo of her – but he suggested they instead take a selfie near the edge of the cliff.

Arielle said she then asked her husband to move away from the edge ‘because I was feeling dizzy,’ and he obliged.

But when she then approached the doctor, he ‘grabbed me by my upper arms and started pushing me back towards the cliff edge.’

At the same time, ‘he was yelling something to the effect of “Get back over there, I’m so f***ing sick of you,”‘ Arielle wrote.

She said she thought he was joking at first, then ‘quickly realized he was seriously trying to make me fall off the cliff.’

Arielle recounted that she quickly threw herself onto the ground away from the edge, but her husband climbed on top of her.

Desperate, Arielle said she pleaded with him to think about their two young children, ages 2 and 5.

Arielle’s petition describes how Gerhardt suggested they hike a trail near Pali Lookout, which she described as having ‘narrow ridge sections with steep drop-offs on both sides’

She said she was afraid to stand near the edge, but Gerhardt started pushing her

Still, they continued to tussle – and at one point Arielle said Gerhardt grabbed his bag and took out a syringe, which he tried to inject her with.

‘I do not know what was in the syringe, but Gerhardt is an anesthesiologist and has access to several potentially lethal medications as part of his employment,’ Arielle noted in her petition for a restraining order. 

Thinking on her feet, Arielle said she grabbed the syringe and threw it as her husband combed through his bag for what she thought was another syringe, TribLIVE reports. 

But before he could grab it, Arielle said she bit his forearm.

That seemed to calm him down for a moment ‘but then grabbed a nearby rock and began bashing me repeatedly on the head with it.’

He also grabbed her by the hair and smashed her face into the ground, she claims.

Fortunately two women further down the path heard Arielle screaming for help.

One then ran ahead and told police she saw a man hitting a woman in the head with a rock, as the woman cried out: ‘He is trying to kill me.’

The women then warned Gerhardt they were calling 911, at which point he fled the scene, while the women helped Arielle down the trail, where first responders transported her to a local hospital in critical condition.

Despite her condition, she was able to tell police that her husband had attacked her, and he was arrested following a six-hour long manhunt.

The doctor was officially indicted on second-degree attempted murder charges on Friday

He had previously been married to sex worker Jessica Patella; The two married when they we both just 20 and stayed married for over 15 years, sharing two children. 

One of their children, a trans man who goes by Kieren, shared details from his difficult childhood in an essay published online and written in second person.

‘You don’t remember much of your childhood except for that one Christmas morning your brother came into your room and you hid under the covers for an hour, waiting for your parents to stop fighting. They got a divorce the next year.

Kieren wrote about being admitted to psychiatrist hospitals and seeing his mother ‘losing blood like trees lose leaves in the fall’ as she went through two miscarriages.

He also mentioned his stepmother Arielle positively, writing: ‘She calls you by the name you want to be called by.’

Konig’s first wife is a sex worker who goes by Jessie Sage. She shares two children with him

Konig has a trans son Kieren, with whom he had a fraught relationship

Kieren said that he started talking to his dad again after a period of no contact.

‘He’s not screaming at you. He’s calm,’ Kieren wrote about Konig.

In 2017, Konig shared a picture with Kieran alongside the band Evanescence, writing: ‘Evanescence Synthesis Orchestral Tour 2017. What an amazing night with my son!’

By then Konig was already in a relationship with Arielle; the two seem to have moved from the Pittsburgh area to Hawaii sometime after 2020.