Man with body in hotel sentenced to four years

A New Zealand man whose arrest gained international headlines when police revealed they had found a woman’s body frozen in dry ice in his hotel room in Newport Beach in March pleaded guilty to felony cocaine possession Monday.

In early March, Newport Beach detectives who arrested Stephen Royds, 47, for selling cocaine out of his Fairmont Newport Beach searched his room and found the body of 33-year-old Monique Trepp, stuffed in a plastic chest filled with dry ice. Trepp had died nearly a year earlier, coroner officials said.

The bizarre nature of the situation had newspapers worldwide writing about the mystery woman frozen for nearly a year in a swanky Newport Beach hotel.

As a toxicology report later confirmed, Trepp had died of an overdose.

According to court documents, Royds told police he had stored Trepp’s body out of fear it would lead to his arrest for the drugs. Royds was not charged for failing to report Trepp’s body, a misdemeanor.

As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, Royds was sentenced to four years in prison with his guilty plea. Credit for time served means his sentence is a little more than three years.

— Joseph Serna