DOCTOR ON THE STAND: KONIG TESTIFIES, SON DROPS BOMBSHELL, JUDGE GUTS LIVELY LAWSUIT

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. I'm Garrett Fisher. Monday, April sixth, twenty twenty six. We've been living inside the Konig trial for two weeks now. If you've been with us, you know the shape of this thing. An anesthesiologist his wife, a birthday hike on a Hawaiian cliff side a rock, two nurses who ran towards screaming they heard from a trail, and a man who fled to Maui with blood on his shirt. Last week, the case shifted after five days of prosecution witnesses, crime scene evidence, DNA, bodycam footage, Ariel's testimony from the stand. On the one year anniversary of the attack, the state called a digital forensics detective who walked the jury through what Gerhart Koenick was doing alone on his computer in the dark on Christmas Eve, and then on Christmas morning, and then over the following weeks, and then in early March, three weeks before the hike, when he started searching for trails with cliffs. Then his son took the stan, his own son, and then Gerhart Koenig himself took the stan, looked at the jury and told them he never meant to hurt anyone. Also, this week, a federal judge in New York handed down a ruling in the Blake Lively versus Justin Baldoni case that dramatically changed the shape of that trial. Ten of her thirteen claims gone. The trial is still on for May. But

1:35 what Lively is walking in with now looks very different from what she filed. Let's get into it. We've given you the full foundation of this trial, day one through day five. If you need to catch up, that's five separate episodes in the archive. Go find them. They're worth your time. What I want to do today is walk you through the three days that just closed out last week, because taken together, day six, seven, and eight are something else. They are the kind of sequence that either makes or breaks a case. And depending on which side of that chair you're sitting on in that courtroom, the week could not have gone more differently. Let's start with day six, Tuesday, March thirty. First, the prosecution called Detective Thomas Ainuma from the Honolulu Police Department's Digital Forensics unit. His job was to walk the jury through what he found on Gerhart Koenig's phone, his SIM card, and his laptop look. Digital forensics testimony can put a jury to sleep in about seven minutes. It is detailed, it is technical, and it requires patience. But this detective had something to show them that required no explanation at all. Christmas Eve, December twenty fourth, twenty twenty four, at four thirty four in the morning, Gerhart Koenig's laptop was active. He was on Google Chrome browsing Reddit. The subreddit was called as one after Infidelity, and the threads he visited at four thirty four am four thirty seven, four forty nine, four fifty seven were

3:08 titled things like lying again, It's over those who have been betrayed? Did you fall out of I did a horrible thing? Christmas morning, December twenty fifth, three twenty five am. Back on Reddit, same subreddit, wives why did you do it? And a search from relationship advice because by this point he had migrated from the infidelity form to a broader search asking how to trust a spouse who cheated and then didn't tell the whole story? An anesthesiologist Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, four in the morning, spiraling through Reddit. He had, also, according to the detective, purchased a voice activated audio recorder from Walmart, had it delivered to his home. He was monitoring his wife documenting, logging, and then the detective got to February. In March February twenty eight, Koenig search for secret hikes on Maui March third. He searched for the Polypuca Hikes, specifically a trail, the detective explained, with documented ratings noting a steep cliff. He reviewed all the trails.

4:12 He looked at the ratings, and then the detective told the jury what specific keyword searches had been run during the window covered by the search warrant, among them danger, death, fall, kill, die, cliff, hike. There was also a dropbox folder on the laptop named divorce. The defense tried on cross to blunt the impact of all of this. They noted that the search warrant limited what could be examined. That context matters, that a man grieving an affair might naturally search those terms. Maybe, but you don't get to unring that bell for the jury. They heard it. They saw it Christmas Eve at four in the morning on a forum for betrayed spouses is not an accident. Searching for cliffs three weeks before taking your wife to one is not a coin incidents. That's not a mistake, that's a choice. After the detective, the prosecution called the Koenig family. Peter Masked, Ariel's stepfather, testified about the tension he observed between Ariel and Gerhart in the months before the attack. He described a party in late January where Gearhart seemed to be performing normalcy, smiling, engaging, acting like everything was fine, but it wasn't. Everyone in that room could feel it. Judith masked, Ariel's mother. She confirmed the same thing, tension, coldness between them, though she said in the period just before the trip, things seemed to be improving, or at least appeared to be. And then Emil Koenig took the stand. Gerhart Koenig's son from

5:45 his first marriage. Emil is the person his father called after the attack on the trail twice. The prosecution has been building toward this testimony since day one, when they told the jury and opening statements that Gerhart Koenig confess to his son. The defense flatly denied it. Thomas O'taki told the jury in his opening that there was no confession, that that call never happened the way the state says it did. Emil told the jury what happened. First call came in at ten forty two in the morning on March twenty fourth, the same day as the attack. Emil said his father told him he would not be making it back to Maui. He told Emil to take care of the younger kids. He said Ariel had been cheating on him. He said he had tried to kill her and she had gotten away, and he said he planned to jump off the cliff before the police could catch him.

6:38 Second call, eleven forty six a m a FaceTime, his father asked Emil if he had told anyone, said again that he planned to jump. Ended the call with the words, I'm going to go before the police catch me. Emil could see blood on his father's shirt. He now lives with Ariel Koenig and has not spoken to his father since that day. That's not a dear detail, that's a verdict. When a man's own adult son is living with the woman his father tried to kill, something has already been decided in that family. The prosecution rested its case in chief day seven Wednesday, April first, April Fool's Day. I'm not gonna make anything of that. The defense opened with their expert witness, doctor Jonathan Arden, a forensic pathologist. Doctor Arden had reviewed Ariel's injuries and was there to challenge the prosecution's narrative about the severity of what happened on that trail. His testimony in plain terms, the injuries were real, but not as severe as the prosecution claimed. He said the scalp injury appeared severe due to heavy bleeding. Scalp wounds bleed dramatically even when they're relatively minor, but that it was soft tissue damage only, no skull fracture, no brain injury. He estimated the number of impacts at two to three, not the ten witnesses and Ariel herself described.

8:03 He said the injuries were inconsistent with someone being struck ten times with full force by a rock. The prosecution on cross made one point very clearly. Doctor Arden is a paid defense expert who frequently testifies for the defense. He acknowledged that they also challenged his dismissal of Ariel's concussion symptoms. He called them self reported and said there was no independent confirmation. The prosecution wasn't going to let that stand. A concussion doesn't always show up on imaging. That is simply how concussions work. Then Gerhard Koenig took the stand in his own defense. He told the jury his life story. Grew up in South Africa, moved to San Diego at fourteen, went to medical school at the University of Pittsburgh anesthesiology residency, clinical and teaching roles. He was married before had two children with his first wife, met Ariel On E. Harmony, got married in twenty eighteen, had two more children. The family moved to Maui. He described when he first became suspicious of Ariel, she was constantly on her phone, hiding the screen from him, acting defensive when he asked about it. She had taken a trip to South Africa in twenty twenty four for work, and her communication during that trip was unusually sparse. He said, something felt wrong. He unlocked her phone while she was sleeping and found the WhatsApp thread with Jeff Miller. He read through it. He documented which messages she was deleting.

9:33 He described confronting her. He described calling her a lying bitch and a whore, though he testified it wasn't in the first confrontation. It came later. He told the jury that after she admitted to the affair and expressed remorse, they decided to try to work on the marriage. He said he felt hopeful. He said he bought the recording device because he wasn't sure he could trust what she was telling him, but that he genuinely wanted to believe her. And then he described the hike. He denied any intent to harm her. He said it was a normal thing for them to do together. He said she attacked him, shoved him, grabbed him, grabbed him by the testicles, struck him with a rock. He said he wrestled the rock away and hit her back. He said he never intended to kill her. He said the phone call to his son was not a confession, it was a goodbye. He told the jury he was suicidal, that the investigation, the loss of his marriage, the weight of all of it had pushed him to the edge. He called Emil to say goodbye, not to confess. He became emotional on the stand.

10:39 He said he was almost pushed over the edge himself that day, day eight Thursday, April, second cross examination, prosecutor Joel Garner had Koenig on the stand and he did not let up. He walked through the affair in detail. The WhatsApp messages, which Garner pointed out, contained nothing sexual, good morning texts, questions about sleep, whether she liked Blues Traveler.

11:19 There's nothing sexual in these messages, is there, doctor Koenig. No, This is two people saying good morning to each other. Koenig agreed, but he maintained that it wasn't about any individual message. It was the relationship as a whole, the intimacy of it, the secrecy. Garner then walked through what Koenig did next. He contacted Jeff Miller's wife, Andrea, sent her an email, provided her with Ariel's personal cell number and email address, encouraged her to reach out. The prosecutor suggested Koenig wanted Andrea to contact Ariel specifically to punish and humiliate her. Koenig denied it. He had also disclosed the affair to Ariel's best friends, a married couple, before a group trip to California. The prosecution argued he was trying to isolate Ariel from her support system. Koenig said he was just preparing people for a difficult conversation. Then on that trip, he confronted her, called her a lying bitch and a whore, He admitted it. He wanted her to move out of the house. Their sons were four years old and eighteen months. No mother would want to move out with children that young, Garner noted. Koenig said he wanted her out of the house to deal with the aftermath of the affair. He also wanted her to quit her job as a nuclear engineer, which would have made her entirely financially dependent on him and his salary.

12:44 He acknowledged as much, correct, he said when Garner asked whether without her job, she would be dependent on his paycheck to keep a roof over her kids' heads. The jury was also shown the contents of his medical bag, a syringe a generic form of propofaal, the anesthetic that caused Michael Jackson's death, in the bag that he had with him, and the jury was told that Gerhard Koenig stood to collect two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from a life insurance policy on Ariel's life in the event of her death. He denied that money was a motive. He suggested Ariel's one point five million dollar policy on his life was the reason she attacked him first. The prosecution didn't appear to find that persuasive. He also testified that the last time he and Ril were intimate was Christmas Eve, twenty twenty four, The same night the digital forensics detective showed the jury he was on Reddit at four in the morning, spiraling through infidelity forums. The trial is expected to continue through mid April. We'll keep bringing you every development when we come back. A federal judge in New York just handed down a one hundred and fifty two page ruling in the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni case, and ten of her thirteen claims are gone.

13:58 What's left and whether it is still matters? Welcome back. We have covered this case extensively. If you were with us for the season one countdown the top ten crime and justice stories of twenty twenty five, Lively versus Baldoni was number three. You know the shape of it, but let me give you the key context before I walk you through what just happened. Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni co starred in the twenty twenty four film It Ends with Us. Baldoni also directed. The film made three hundred and fifty million dollars globally, and then everything went sideways.

14:44 In December twenty twenty four, Lively file a complaint accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment on set, improvised kissing, entering her trailer while she was breastfeeding, inappropriate comments, and of orchestrating a coordinated smear campaign against her through a crisis PR operation after she complained about the conditions on set. Text messages from Baldoni's PR team became central to that allegation, including one that read, you know we can bury anyone. Baldoni countersued for four hundred million dollars, claiming defamation. That suit was thrown out entirely in June twenty twenty five. Lively's case survived and has been heading toward a May eighteenth trial in New York City. Last Thursday, April, second Judge Lewis Lyman issued a ruling on pre trial motions one hundred and fifty two pages, and when the dust settled, ten of Lively's thirteen claims were gone. Let me walk you through this because the reasoning matters. The core of the dismissed claims was sexual harassment, and the reason they were thrown out has nothing to do with whether the harassment happened. The reason they were thrown out is because of a contract that was never signed. There is something called an Actor Loan Agreement or ALA. This is the standard contract that would have governed workplace conduct on the set of it ends with us, including sexual harassment protections.

16:10 Lively and Baldoni's team spent months negotiating the terms of that agreement. They could not come to terms, and so the ALA was never signed. For Lively to bring a sexual harassment claim under federal and California state law, the Civil Rights Act and the California Labor Code, she needed to be classified as an employee of the film. But Judge Lyman looked at the facts and determined that Lively enjoyed so much economic independence and creative control that she was legally an independent contractor, not an employee. And if you're not an employee, those protections don't apply to you. The judge was not subtle about the degree of control Lively exercised. He listed it out. She had a twelve hour cap on her days. She selected ninety percent of the songs on the film. She oversaw every shot that made it to the movie. She conducted meetings with department heads and the studio she oversaw a team of editors.

17:07 She could have walked off the set at any moment. The only consequence would have been breach of contract. The judge wrote that she enjoyed the economic independence to walk at any moment, and that level of independence is precisely what puts her outside the protections she was trying to invoke. There's a painful irony in that the more power Lively had on that set than by all accounts she had substantial power, the less legally protected she was. The law, as written was designed to protect workers with less leverage. Blake Lively, on this particular film had too much leverage for those laws to apply to her. That's not a vindication of anyone's conduct on that set. The judge made that clear. He wrote that a reasonable jury could find that Lively genuinely experienced what happened on set as sexually harassing.

17:58 He even acknowledged that the two things using sexual harassment claims as leverage for creative control and sincerely experiencing harassment are not mutually exclusive, both can be true at the same time. He also dismissed the fat shaming claims. Those alleged that Baldoni asked Lively's trainer how much she would weigh when filming began, and separately introduced her to a probiotic specialist who also specialized in weight loss. The judge said this couldn't support a hostile work environment claim because the physical appearance of the film's lead was, by everyone's acknowledgment, including Lively's own communications, a part of the job. She had written to her agent that she was working out four hours a day to prepare. She told Baldoni her husband, and she treated roles like athletic events. The judge dismissed the improvised kiss allegation two. He wrote that even if Baldoni was improvising within the scene, it happened within the context of actors performing, not outside of it. The conduct, in his view, was derected at her character in the scene, not at Lively herself. Here's what's left three claims breach of contract, retaliation, and aiding and abetting retaliation. The retaliation claims survived because there is a different agreement that was signed, a contract writer agreement signed in January twenty twenty four that included specific language prohibiting retaliation against Lively for raising concerns about conduct on set. That agreement is enforceable, and

19:30 the judge found enough evidence for a jury to decide whether what followed the pr campaign, the coordinated online response, the text messages constituted retaliation. So this is the case that goes to trial on May eighteenth, not the headline sexual harassment case, not the fat shaming claims, a narrower fight. Did Baldoni and his team retaliate against Lively for speaking up in violation of a contract they signed? And did he breach that contract? In other ways? Ively's legal team put out a statement that was careful and disciplined. They said the case has always been about the retaliation and the playbook used to destroy her reputation, and that the case going to trial will expose exactly that they framed the sexual harassment dismissal. Clearly those claims fail, not because the conduct didn't happen, but because the court found she was a contractor rather than an employee. Baldoni's attorneys were pleased, as you'd expect. They called it a significant narrowing of the case. They said they look forward to defending the remaining claims in court. Both sides are right about something.

20:36 The ruling is a real blow to Lively. Ten of thirteen claims is not a minor setback, but the retaliation claim, with those text messages, with the documentary evidence of a coordinated pr campaign, could still be the most damaging part of the whole case. We can bury. Anyone is still going to be read aloud in a courtroom in New York City next month. Trial date May eighteenth will be there. That's Monday, April sixth. Two stories, both of them unresolved. Gerhart Koenig is still on the stand in Honolulu. His cross examination continues. The defense will present more witnesses, and sometime in the next few weeks, twelve people will decide whether a man who searched for cliffs, bought recording devices, spiraled through Reddit at four in the morning on Christmas, and whose own son testified that he called twice to confess.

21:30 Whether that man is guilty of attempted murder or a victim of a fight that got out of hand. In New York. Blake Lively is heading toward a courtroom with a much smaller case than she filed, but she's still heading there. Nobody's off the hook, yet do better. Disclaimer. Daily Crime and Justice is produced by Calaroga Shark Media. This episode was researched and written with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools. We make every effort to be accurate, but we source from court records, news organizations, official trial coverage, and the Internet, which means we can be wrong. If you catch an error, let us know. Some details in this episode come from ongoing trials and may be subject to change as proceedings continue. This show is produced for informational and entertainment purposes. Nothing here is legal advice. We are not lawyers, and if you need a lawyer, please find one. All persons discussed in connection with criminal proceedings are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.