Woman behind infamous failed horse show reaches plea deal in husband’s murder-for-hire plot

The 43-year-old unknowingly told an undercover detective how she ‘wanted her husband killed and his body disposed’

A San Diego woman pleaded guilty to offering to pay someone to kill her husband, with whom she tried to create a multimillion-dollar equestrian show.

Tatyana Remley pleaded guilty on 28 December to one count of solicitation to commit murder — after an attempt to hire someone to kill Mark Remley — and one count of carrying a loaded, concealed firearm that was not registered to her in a vehicle, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office said.

The 43-year-old was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison. The second gun charge that Remley faced was dismissed.

The years-long sentence comes months after Remley was arrested in August 2023. Earlier that month, she spoke to someone — who turned out to be an undercover detective — about how she “wanted her husband killed and his body disposed,” the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department wrote.

Remley “brought three additional firearms and U.S. currency as a down payment for the murder,” the sheriff’s office said.

The month prior, police responded to reports of a house fire; Remley was inside, with three guns and ammunition, prompting her arrest for firearms-related offenses.

The next day, the investigators were made aware of an alleged murder-for-hire plot she was trying to orchestrate against her estranged husband, the sheriff’s office wrote.

The New York Post reported that a mutual friend was offered $2m for the killing.

In 2012, the pair produced Valitar, a circus-like acrobatics show featuring people and horses. However, their time in the tent was short-lived as they had to shut down the show due to low ticket sales, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported at the time.

“They had no clue what they were doing — about anything,” the show’s director said following the show’s demise. “They weren’t horse people, and they weren’t show people.”

One of the performers who left Valitar before it premiered told the publication that Tatyana Remley is “not a good horse rider and [Mark] wanted her to be the star of the show and all of us to kowtow to her.”

The couple got married in 2011 and has been on-again-off-again for years. Tatyana Remley filed for divorce in July, court records show.

The pair lived a luxurious lifestyle, according to Remley’s divorce petition, which claimed the couple would spend around $50,000 a month, owning houses in Hawaii, Rancho Santa Fe, Coronado, and Del Mar.

“Wife is experiencing extreme financial strain. She is unable to maintain her realistic monthly expenses of just $12,000, much less [than] what she was accustomed to at $50,000. She has no income and does not have the same access to funds and assets that Respondent does,” Tiffany Brown, Tatyana’s attorney, wrote in the July filing.