HONOLULU (CN) - One year ago today, Arielle Konig says her husband gave her a birthday card, took her on a hike along a cliffside trail on the Hawaiian island of Oahu and tried to kill her.

On Tuesday, she read that card aloud in Oahu First Circuit Court.

"Happy Birthday, Angel Face. There isn't an obstacle in this world too hard for me to fight through for you," she read tearfully. "You're the heart of our family, and that heart is strong. You're a terrific mom. The kids and I hit the jackpot with you. Love always, G."

Arielle Konig, 37, is a central witness in the attempted murder trial of her estranged husband, Gerhardt Konig, 47, a former anesthesiologist at Maui Memorial Hospital who faces life in prison if convicted.

The trouble began, by both sides' account, in early December 2024, when Gerhardt Konig logged into his wife's WhatsApp account and discovered she had been exchanging messages with a married coworker named Jeffrey Miller, a senior director at TerraPower, the Washington State nuclear energy company where Arielle Konig works remotely as a project manager.

The relationship never turned physical, she testified. But the messages had been frequent, sometimes all day long, on weekends, about personal matters having nothing to do with work.

The two had developed a code word: when Arielle Konig wanted to alert Miller that her husband was nearby, she would use the term HALEU, an acronym for a type of nuclear fuel used in advanced reactors that both worked with professionally.

"It was for Gerhardt specifically," she said. "But yes, that's correct."

According to both sides, Gerhardt discovered the relationship after accessing Arielle's WhatsApp account, where he found live messages between her and Miller, while other messages were marked as deleted.

In the weeks that followed, he went through her phone nearly every day, monitored her emails, and demanded she have no one-on-one contact with Miller, she claims. He raised the possibility of her quitting her job entirely. She refused.

"I like my job," she told the jury.

The demands extended into their physical relationship. After the confrontation, Arielle said that Gerhardt wanted more physical closeness.

"Gerhardt really wanted a lot of physical touch," she said. "So there was a lot of cuddling and things like that. And any refusal on my part would be seen as me withdrawing."

When she pulled back, she said, he would mention the WhatsApp messages and ask how she could have done "this to us."

She and her husband decided to call what happened an emotional affair, she said. They purchased and listened to an audiobook together called "How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair." They entered individual and couples therapy. She was apologetic, she said, and committed to saving the marriage.

During cross-examination, defense attorney Thomas Otake questioned whether how she had described the emotional affair. He showed the jury her texts with Jeffrey Miller after Gerhardt Konig accused her of engaging in an elaborate secret affair.

"You didn't say to him it was just flirty text messages," Otake said. "You said it was stupid of you and it won't happen again. Correct?"

"Yes," she said. "Breaking his trust. Yes."

By February, things seemed to be turning a corner. The couple took a family vacation with their two young sons and relatives. In March, Arielle Konig said, both of them were putting in effort. They had committed to giving their marriage two years.

When her husband asked what she wanted to do for her birthday, she mentioned that she had always wanted to visit Oahu, but that it did not need to be then. He booked the trip.

The morning of her birthday, he gave her a necklace and the card.

"I felt hopeful that this was going to be a nice trip," Arielle Konig said. "And kind of the start of the next chapter for us."

The two sides disagree about what happened next.

Arielle Konig said that on the Pali Puka trail, a rugged footpath above the Nuuanu Pali Lookout, her husband grabbed her by the upper arms and began pushing her toward the edge of the ridge.

She threw herself to the ground, grabbing hold of roots and shrubs. He straddled her, she said, and produced a syringe, telling her to hold still while she batted it away. He then gripped a vial in his closed fist while reaching into his backpack with his other hand, apparently attempting to load a second syringe, she said. When she screamed, Arielle Konig said Gerhardt Konig covered her mouth.

"Nobody's going to hear you out here," she said he told her. "Nobody's coming to save you."

She pleaded with him, she testified, invoking their children, his family, the consequences. She said he seemed, briefly, to pause and take a breath. She thought she might escape. Instead, he picked up a rock and began striking her in the head, she said.

"I just started screaming," she said. "Because in my mind he was trying to knock me unconscious so he could drag me over the edge."

According to Otake, it was Arielle Konig who turned physical first on the trail, shoving her husband from behind near the edge and then striking him. He said Gerhardt Konig grabbed the rock only after she hit him with it, and stopped on his own accord.

Otake also claimed no syringe was recovered from the scene, that Arielle Konig suffered no skull fractures, that she never lost consciousness, and that she was discharged from the hospital the following morning.

"There was absolutely no premeditated plan to take her up to this busy parking lot in broad daylight, in the middle of the morning, and try to kill her there," Otake said during opening arguments. "This was an unplanned, unanticipated scuffle that happened between a couple."

Whatever happened on the trail, the aftermath has been contested as well. Otake said that three days after the incident, Arielle Konig moved roughly $123,000 from the couple's joint bank account into a personal account, without her husband's knowledge and before filing for divorce.

She had already retained an attorney by then, and it was her attorney, not the police, she called first when she discovered a work bag in the couple's Maui home containing syringes and medication.

Otake also confronted her with an email she sent to her primary care physician on Maui, Dr. Joanna Young, asking that traumatic brain injury or concussion be added to her diagnosis notes from an appointment the day before.

He pointed out that neither term appeared anywhere in the records from Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, where she had been treated after the incident. Arielle Konig acknowledged she could not recall whether she had reviewed her Queen's records before sending the email.

Arielle Konig has yet to finalize her divorce. She is seeking financial damages, the couple's home, and custody of their two children, ages 3 and 5.

The trial is expected to last several more weeks.

Source: Courthouse News Service