KONIG TRIAL OPENS: "SHE HIT ME FIRST," FL MOM AVOIDS JAIL FOR HIRING HITMAN & CORNHOLE KILLER

0:03 Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Garrett Fisher. Wednesday, March twenty fifth, twenty twenty six. We came into this week with a trial already under way, a case we introduced you to last week. Gerhard Konig, the anesthesiologist from Maui, charged with trying to beat his wife to death with a rock at a scenic overlook while she screamed for help. Days one and two of that trial are now on the books, and we have a lot to get to. But we also have two new cases that arrived in the last forty eight hours. In Miami, a woman was sentenced yesterday for trying to hire a hit man to kill her own three year old son. She used a fake website the detective posed is the killer. She agreed to the price, gave them a photo of the child, gave them an address, gave them a safe word. She did everything but complete the transaction. Yesterday, a judge sentenced her no prison time, of course. And in Charles County, Maryland, a man has been charged with murder. He allegedly shot another man twice in the head during a car argument, drove away with the body still in the passenger seat.

1:11 And dumped it on the side of the road. What makes this case almost impossible to process. The suspect is a professional athlete. He competes in the American Cornhole League. He is also a quadruple amputee. I don't have a punchline for that one. I don't think anyone does. Three cases. Let me walk you through this. We covered this case last Friday, March twentieth, So if you're new to the show, welcome, and I'm sorry for how we're opening your week. Quick recap. Gerhard Koenig is an anesthesiologist who worked at Maui Health in Hawaii. On March twenty fourth of last year, exactly one year ago this week, he took his wife Ariel to the Nuanu poly Lookout on Oahu. It was her birthday trip he had planned it, according to prosecutors. What he'd actually planned was her death. Prosecutors say he asked her to pose for a selfie near the edge of a steep cliff. She said she wasn't comfortable, she walked away.

2:12 He allegedly pushed her into the bushes. She got free again. He allegedly picked up a rock and beat her head with it approximately ten times, grabbing her hair with his other hand and slamming her face into the ground. She was screaming for help. Two women nurses, it turns out, heard the screaming from the trail and ran toward it. When they arrived, they found Ariel on her back, her husband on top of her, blood everywhere, and there were syringes. Ariel told police she watched Gerhardt reach into his bag and remove two syringes. He is an anesthesiologist. He knew exactly what was in them. He brought them on a hike. That is the case we introduced last Friday. Trial opened the same day, and now we have two full days of testimony to work through. Day one opening statements, the prosecution laid it out clean and cold. Gerhart Koenig had planned this trip for Ariel's birthday. He had organized it.

3:11 He had brought them to one of the most beautiful vistas in the United States, and according to the state, he had brought a bag packed with syringes. One detail from opening statements that I think will stay with this jury. Prosecutors say Gerhart Koenig called his own son, their son, after the incident, and told him what he had done. Said he tried to kill Ariel, said she got away, said he was quote sick of this his own son. The defense came out with a counter narrative. Attorney Thomas O'take told the jury that Gerhart Koenig is falsely accused, that there was no confession to the Sun, that the real aggressor that day was Ariel, that she hit Gerhart with a rock first, and that he hit her back in retaliation, That there was no premeditated plan, that there were no syringes, and that a marriage in crisis does not equal attempted murder. The defense also leaned hard into the affair. They described Ariel as and I'm quoting the phrase they used, unfaithful, unwilling, and untrue, accused her of an ongoing relationship with a married coworker. Then the witnesses took the stand. Amanda Morris and Sarah Bucksbaum, two nurses on a hike. Best friends. They testified that they were just starting their walk when they heard a woman screaming, help me, help me. Bucksbaum told the jury they initially thought someone had fallen off the cliff, so they ran toward it. What they found a woman on her back,

4:45 a man crouched over her, hitting her with a rock, blood covering her head and face, Ariel crawling toward them, saying help me, he's trying to kill me. Bucksbaum described making eye contact with Gerhard Koenig for about thirty si. She said he had a cold, emotionless stare that made her feel very uneasy. Morris told the jury she identified the defendant as the man holding the rock. On cross examination, the defense got some traction. Morris confirmed she only saw the defendant strike Ariel once with the rock, not ten times, and Bucksbaum was forced to acknowledge that in a police photo lineup, she initially identified a different person, not Gerhart Koenig, someone else. She corrected herself eventually identified Gerhart, but the defense made sure the jury heard about the first identification.

5:36 That is going to matter. Eyewitness reliability is the thread the defense is pulling at. The jury now knows that one of the two women who ran toward the screaming initially identified the wrong man. There were also police witnesses on day one, officers who canvassed the area after the attack. They confirmed they did not find the phone, the wallet, the per the vials, or any syringe. The defense will make something of that too. Day two evidence, the jury saw photographs of Ariel Koenig's injuries, her face, her head, the visible wounds, and here's the thing that the defense will use. The jury also saw photographs of Gerhardt Koenig with injuries to his own face, facial bruising, cuts. His clothes were shown to the jury as well. The defense wants that evidence in front of these jurors. Their client was hurt too. That is the foundation of their theory.

6:34 This was a mutual altercation, not a premeditated murder attempt. She hit him, he hit her back. The prosecution will tell you that a man hitting back does not involve ten blows to the head with a rock. It does not involve reaching into a bag for syringes. It does not involve planning a birthday trip to a cliff side viewpoint. A terrain expert from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources also testified on day two. He described the trail conditions muddy, wet, slippery, dense tree canopy, the kind of place where you could fall and it could look like an accident, the kind of place where a push toward a cliff edge might not leave obvious evidence, the kind of place you choose if you were planning something.

7:20 There is a witness this jury has not heard from yet Ariel Koenig herself. She has said she intends to testify. When she does, she will walk into that courtroom and describe what it felt like to be struck in the head repeatedly by her husband while she screamed, while he kept going. The defense will cross examine her. They will bring up the affair, They will bring up her credibility. They will do what defense attorneys are supposed to do. Ariel Koenig survived a cliff side attack on her birthday. She's going to be asked to survive a courtroom next. Remember Ariel Koenig, who is still here to tell it?

8:09 Rentahitman dot com. That is a real website. I need you to know that before we go further. It is not a real service. It is a parody website. The owner has said publicly that he runs it largely as a joke, that he receives hundreds of service requests a week, and that most of them are clearly fake, but some of them are not. And when the requests aren't fake, when someone fills out the intake form with a real name, a real photo, a real address, and a deadline. Bob Innes, the man who runs the site, contacts the police. That is what happened. In July twenty twenty three, a woman in Miami submitted a service request to rent a hitman dot com. The intended target her three year old son.

8:53 She included his name, his photo sent by the child's grandmother, who had taken it the day before, the address where he could be found. She wanted the job done by the end of that week. She included a safe word put me in coach the reason listed for the request to get something done quote once and for all. She wanted her son taken away, far, far, far away and possibly be killed. But asap Bob Innis saw the request, he flagged it. Police launched an investigation. A detective posed as the hit man made contact with the phone number provided. The woman agreed to pay three thousand dollars to have her son killed. Police trace the ip address, went to the address, found the child safe with his grandmother, then went to the woman's father's house and arrested her. She confessed her name is Yasmin Pias. She was eighteen years old at the time of her arrest. She had been a mother since she was approximately fifteen. Her son was the product of what prosecutors described in court Monday as a potentially incestuous relationship. There's a man named Gamaliel Soza who also played a role in this. He was Pye'z's boyfriend when she told him about the plan. His text messages were, to put it plainly, encouraging one message, the kid is the problem. I hope you see that. All I ever wanted was to free you. I told you about the kid. You won't do anything another You do it,

10:26 and I'll think about coming back. He wanted to come back. She wanted him to come back, and so she went to a fake hit man website. Of course she did. Piees had initially pleaded not guilty. She faced up to forty years in prison. She was also separately dealing with a schizophrenia diagnosis, multiple surgeries in her past, and a life that had been, by any measure, extraordinarily difficult before any of this happened. Her father, after her original arrest, told reporters his daughter was not a monster, that she was a girl, girl who had been bullied, who had health problems, who had been called names, her whole life. He believed the justice system would show the full truth.

11:08 Three years later, Monday March twenty third, twenty twenty six, yesterday, Yasmin Pai has appeared in court and pleaded guilty solicitation of first degree murder, unlawful use of a communications device, tampering with evidence, all of it. The sentence no jail time, two years of strict community control, followed by twelve years of reporting probation. If she violates any of it, she faces up to forty years in state prison. She cannot contact her son until her probation ends in twenty forty, by which point he will be approximately twenty years old. Her parental rights were terminated. Her son was adopted by her own mother, who already had him living with her.

11:52 Yasmin Pius now lives with her biological father, the same father who defended her to the press in twenty twenty three. The judge at an earlier hearing in this case made a remark that has stayed with me. He said something to the effect of, if the intent wasn't so serious, this would almost be comical. Nobody looking at that website could have believed it was real, But she did. Here is where I land on this. The outcome is jarring. No prison time for soliciting the murder of your child is a sentence that will make a lot of people very angry, and that anger is not unreasonable. But I want to hold two things at once. The child is safe. He is with a family that wants him. His mother has lost all contact with him for at least fourteen years, possibly more. She will spend the next fourteen years on supervised release, one violation away from forty years in prison.

12:46 She is twenty years old. The boy's name has not been made public. He should never know what his mother tried to do. He deserves a life that doesn't start with this. Do better. I want to be very careful about how I tell this story, because the facts of it are so strange that the temptation is to tell it for effect, and the man who is dead deserves better than that. His name is Bradrick Michael Wells. He was twenty seven years old. He was in the front passenger seat of a car on the night of March twenty second, driving through Charles County, Maryland, when, according to witnesses, in argument broke out and then two gunshots Bradrick Wells was shot twice in the head. The driver allegedly asked the passengers to remove him from the car. They refused.

13:45 The two passengers got out and flagged down a police officer. The driver drove away with Bradrick Wells still in the passenger seat. Just after midnight, a resident at a home on Newport Church Road in Charlotte Hall discovered a body on the side of the road, Bradrick well The driver's name is Dayton James Weber. He is twenty seven years old. He lives in Laplata, Maryland. He was found the next morning in Charlottesville, Virginia, at a hospital seeking treatment for injuries. He was arrested there. He was arraigned in Charles County District Court on charges of first degree murder, second degree murder, two counts of first degree assault, and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. And now I have to tell you the rest of it. Dayton Weber is a quadruple amputee. As an infant, he contracted a blood infection that resulted in the amputation of all four limbs.

14:38 He has lived his entire life without hands or feet. He has also, according to his social media presence and competition history, built a life as a professional athlete. He competes in the American Cornhole League the ACL, which has been broadcast on ESPN since twenty sixteen. He is, by the league standards, a serious competitor. Cornhole, the beanbag toss game you have played at every backyard party of your adult life, has a professional circuit. It has brackets and rankings and prize money and a commissioner who is actively lobbying for it to become an Olympic sport, and Dayton Weber was in it. Videos posted to social media before his arrest also apparently show him shooting firearms, rifles, and handguns.

15:26 He has found ways to do things that most people would consider physically impossible, which brings us to the question that the Charles County Sheriff's Office has not yet answered, and they have said explicitly that they have not answered it yet. How did Dayton Weber fire a gun? How did he drive a car? The detective who signed the charging document simply describes him pulling out a firearm and shooting Wells twice in the head while driving. The two witnesses identified in court documents only as W one and W two both identified Webber as the shooter. There is apparently no dispute that he was the driver and that he fired the shots. The how is an open question.

16:08 I am not raising the how to suggest that he could not have done it. The evidence on the question of whether he did it appears to be straightforward. Two eyewitnesses in the car who identified him by name. The Charles County Sheriff's office has said there is no evidence of anyone else being involved. I'm raising the how because it tells us something about Dayton Weber that matters to this story. He had spent his life figuring out how to do things people assumed he couldn't do, including if prosecutors are right this. He is currently in Virginia awaiting extradition to Maryland. This case is early. We do not know what the argument was about. We do not know the relationship between Weber and Bradrick Wells. We do not know what happened in the hours before that car ride.

16:55 What we know Bradrick Michael Wells was twenty seven years old. He was in the front seat of a car. He didn't get out of it. Remember Bradrick Wells. That is Wednesday, March twenty fifth, twenty twenty six. Gerhard Koenig is on trial in Honolulu. His wife's testimony is coming. Two nurses already took that stand and described what they saw. The defense is working a photo lineup error and a pair of disputed injuries. We will keep watching. Jasmin Pez pled guilty to soliciting the murder of her three year old son. She will not see the inside of a prison. Her son has a different family now he is saved. Bradrick Michael Wells is dead, a twenty seven year old man who got into a car and did not come back out.

17:44 Dayton Weber is in custody, charged with his murder. More will come. Three cases, none of them feel real, and yet do better.