Would-be heiress Tatyana Remley has been jailed for three years and eight months in California after she admitted trying to put a $2million contract on her husband’s life.
The failed impresario was charged in August after she was arrested in a sting operation by undercover agents in San Diego who she thought were contract killers.
She brought three firearms and an undisclosed cash deposit for the murder of husband Mark Remley who she had left ‘acting like a scared puppy’.
But she denied solicitation to commit murder until Thursday when she cut a deal with the San Diego DA’s office and was handed her sentence at Vista Superior Court.
‘Tatyana ran everything, whatever she said went and he just followed her around,’ the couple’s former business partner Erik Martonovich told DailyMail.com
Would-be heiress Tatyana Remley has been jailed for three years and eight months in California after she admitted trying to put a $2million contract on her husband’s life
Tatyana was arrested after admitting her plans to have him killed and his body disposed of to an undercover detective, San Diego Sheriff’s Department said
‘Mark was like a sniveling scared puppy, and I never saw Mark say no to her.’
The couple married in 2011 and had already filed divorce papers against each other before they gained notoriety the following year with an equestrian circus show at the Del Mar Fairgrounds based on the renowned Cirque de Soleil.
But the ‘Valitar’ show was a spectacular flop and plunged into bankruptcy after just five of the planned 45 performances.
Tatyana, who claimed to be Russian and have a background in dressage, fronted the publicity and insisted on appearing in the show despite her mediocre riding skills.
‘She didn’t do any of the stunts,’ its hospitality manager Roza Tabasa told the The San Diego Union-Tribune.
‘But in the end, when the whole cast lined up and everybody is applauding, this blonde lady comes down the center, the other cast members part for her, and there’s silence.
‘People are thinking, ‘Who’s she? Oh, it’s the lady in the poster.’
In fact Tatyana was a mother-of-two from Bend, Oregon, who had finished school in fourth grade and had a series of failed engagements with wealthy men behind her.
And she was already fighting for custody of the son she shared with multi-millionaire biotech tycoon, Kenneth Woolcott from whom she separated in 2004 after just 11 months of marriage.
Tatyana Remley brought a cash down payment for the hit and three guns to a Starbucks meeting, prosecutors said
Tatyana holding a belt around husband Mark Remley’s neck and leading him around a party
Remley seen posing with her estranged husband’s luxury sports car
The couple previously made headlines a decade ago when they opened an ‘equine-human acrobatics show’ in 2012 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds known as Valitar, which soon went bankrupt
Las Vegas-based equestrian showman Erik Martonovich (left) told DailyMail.com, ‘Tatyana ran everything. Whatever she said went. And he just followed her around. Mark was like a sniveling scared puppy’. Martonovich is pictured with Tatyana and Mark
Remley in a promotional ad for their failed horse show in the San Diego area
‘She was very, look how pretty I am,’ Martonovich said.
‘The persona she wanted to portray to the world was that she’s like some gorgeous Russian supermodel. And maybe supermodel with a touch of Barbie.
‘I don’t think she’s actually Russian, and she’s not a supermodel. But I’m pretty sure what she’s good at is being a gold digger.’
Tatyana and her husband, who had inherited $26 million from his parents, went through a series of failed business ventures and a series of separations and reconciliations until their final split in May last year.
On July 5 she was arrested with three firearms at their home as it burned to the ground, and six days later she filed for divorce again, requesting $15,000 in monthly spousal support.
In the petition she claimed her husband had stood laughing as one of his friends raped her at gunpoint.
‘I am in danger when around the Respondent,’ she wrote.
‘He has a history of prior arrests including a $50,000 bail on record, extreme verbal abuse, drug abuse and has very dangerous friends.
‘In the past he has been ordered to see a mental health counsellor due to his mental instability.
‘On May 21, 2023, Respondent’s friends came into our house and broke open my bedroom door while I was locked inside. It was late at night and I was scared to death.
In for a long stretch: Tatyana sought $15,000 a month in spousal support in her divorce filings to keep up her lavish lifestyle, which she admitted was ‘comfortable’
The couple’s $5.3 million home, located in ritzy Del Mar, California, before the fire, Mark – who is reported to have inherited $26million from his parents – moved into the current Del Mar property with Tatyana
Judge David Danielson handed down the sentence at Vista Superior Court
‘They forced entry into my bedroom and held me at gunpoint. I was raped by one of his friends, who also told me that he planned on killing me.’
Remley has denied abusing his wife but by then she was planning to murder him, and provided ‘detailed information on how she wanted her husband killed and his body disposed of’, according to detectives who met her at the Starbucks in Solana Beach where she was arrested on August 2.
She has been held at the Las Colinas Detention Facility in Santee since her arrest and was due to face a preliminary hearing within days.
She also admitted possessing a loaded and concealed firearm not registered to her, but a second gun-related charge was dropped.