Tatyana Remley was a glamorous would-be-heiress until she attempted to hire a hitman to murder her husband of 12 years, Mark Remley. Now, the beautiful but dangerous woman will spend the next three years and eight months behind bars.
When Tatyana was a young girl, her parents moved the family to Valley Center, California, a small town in San Diego County. Tatyana was in the fourth grade, but her parents didn’t enroll her in school, and for the next 10 years, allegedly kept their daughter from experiencing the world outside her home.
Her own mother, Vera, admitted to Tatyana’s troubled upbringing during a custody battle in 2009 between Tatyana and her first husband, Kenneth Woolcott.
“My husband … wanted to do home school, whatever, once we came to California,” Vera said during the battle, according to documents reviewed by the New York Post. “We had a lot of difficulties with [Tatyana’s father].”
“If I could go back, I would undo everything, and see to it that she be in school … I’m very sorry, because I believe in school,” Vera added.
In his own deposition, Woolcott, a successful lawyer and businessman, claimed that Tatyana “was kept isolated/captive on rural property in Valley Center, without school, social activities and interaction with her community” and that the religious views of her parents included “the rejection of traditional medicine and medical care professionals.”
“She also was denied access to childhood friends out of the parents’ fear any such friends would lead to discovery of her captivity,” Woolcott added. “Essentially, Tatyana was captive for about 10 years (9 – 20 years old) with little, if any, contact with the outside world, education, social interaction or structure.”
Woolcott also said he helped get Tatyana her GED so she could work, but she refused to get a job.
Woolcott was 43 when he married Tatyana, who was only 23 at the time. Tatyana gave birth to a son, but the couple divorced 11 months after their wedding. The custody battle lasted nearly a decade before a judge determined Woolcott was more fit to care for the couple’s son, the Post reported.
During that decade, Tatyana gave birth to a daughter and had several failed engagements. Her former friends told the Post that Tatyana sought out “rich men” who could give her a life of luxury.
She met Mark Remley in a Starbucks in March 2011 and began working together on what would become an epic failure: Valitar.
Mark Remley and Tatyana Remley. Credit: Facebook/Tatyana Remley
Tatyana described Valitar as “Cirque du Soleil with horses,” to a reporter in 2012, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported at the time. The show was to rival Cavalia, which included horses and acrobatics and was created by a founder of Cirque du Soleil, according to Erik Martonovich, a former Cavalia cast member hired to direct Valitar.
“They had no clue what they were doing — about anything,” he told the Union-Tribune about the Remleys. “They weren’t horse people and they weren’t show people.”
Ads for the show featured Tatyana prominently, but she had little riding experience and wasn’t really part of the actual show.
“She didn’t do any of the stunts,” Roza Tabasa, the hospitality manager for the show who saw some of its performances, told the outlet. “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.’”
Credit: Howard Lipin, The San Diego Union-Tribune
The Remleys seemed to throw money around haphazardly, spending lavishly on salaries and equipment but then refusing to spend $1,500 to save a horse’s life. On another occasion, Tatyana reportedly went on a shopping spree at a tack shop and purchased items the show already had.
Weeks before the show’s opening performance, the Remleys stopped sending checks to vendors and employees, the Union-Tribune reported. Martonovich was fired after a horse broke its leg during practice, but he believes other factors led to his firing.
“I’m pretty sure at that point, it was about Tatyana. She didn’t want me around because I didn’t want her,” he told the outlet.
After Martonovich was fired, about 18 of the 25 performers quit, and the show could no longer use acts that Martonovich and his production company owned. Former Cavalia performer Sylvia Zerbini was hired to completely rewrite the show – in two months.
When Valitar opened, reviews found it underwhelming when compared to Cavalia. The first weekend failed to sell out seats, and only ran for five days before filing for bankruptcy.
Mark and Tatyana, however, reconciled their marriage and remained together for another decade, continuing their passion for money, horses, drugs, and orgies, the Post reported. The couple separated and reconciled multiple times during that period, NBC San Diego reported.
The final separation came in early 2023, when Tatyana filed for divorce and accused Mark of abuse, including claims that he pointed a gun at her head and chased her with a knife. She also claimed that he watched as one of his friends raped her. Mark has denied all accusations.
Tatyana also demanded $15,000 a month in spousal support to keep up her lavish lifestyle, the Daily Mail reported.
In the summer of 2023, Mark learned that Tatyana had offered a mutual friend $2 million to murder him, the Post reported. He told police and undercover detectives conducted a sting operation to catch her in the act. She was arrested on August 2 and charged with trying to hire a hitman to kill her husband.
In late December, Tatyana pleaded guilty to solicitation to commit murder and was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison, NBC reported.