Tatyana Remley tried to hire a hitman to murder her estranged husband. Photo: Facebook
A California equestrian who tried to hire a hitman to murder her estranged husband fatally shot herself outside a San Diego bar after being released from prison, but before facing arson charges for burning down the couple’s Del Mar mansion.
Tatyana Remley, 45, put a gun to her head outside the Princess Pub & Grille in the city’s trendy Little Italy section just before 9pm on Dec 18 after firing a single shot into the air, witnesses told local ABC affiliate KGTV.
The San Diego County Medical Examiner later confirmed Remley sustained “a self-inflicted gunshot wound” and was pronounced dead in a “public square” when first responders could not revive her.
It was a jarring end to a drama-fraught decade of tumultuous marriage, a murder plot and alleged arson following financial ruin for the formerly high-flying multimillionaire couple, Mark and Tatyana Remley.
They’d gained notoriety in 2012 for producing a much-hyped horse and acrobatics show, Valitar, then pulling the plug after just four performances. They not only stiffed and stranded vendors, performers and other employees but also had to auction off most of the show’s props and other materials to repay creditors.
The ensuing decade saw a string of off-again-on-again divorce filings between the two, some laced with domestic violence accusations from Tatyana that Mark denied.
She was first arrested in July 2023 on firearms charges when deputies responding to a blaze that destroyed the couple’s home discovered she illegally possessed three firearms plus ammunition, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office said at the time.
A day later, a friend of the Remleys told Mark that Tatyana had put a US$2mil (RM8.09mil) bounty on his head and was shopping for a hitman. Sheriff’s deputies arranged a sting and arrested Tatyana that August after she divulged “detailed information on how she wanted her husband killed and his body disposed” to an undercover detective, police said.
She pleaded guilty in December 2023 to solicitation of murder and a weapons charge and was sentenced to three years and eight months in state prison. She was released early in January of this year, but arrested again in September.
Mark had told police that his wife intentionally set their mansion on fire right after he found out she was trying to have him killed. Fire officials concurred and charged Tatyana with arson, People reported. She pleaded not guilty at her arraignment on Sept 11 and was due back in court to face those charges on March 3. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
