Coke dealer sent home

Stephen David Royds, a convicted drug dealer who kept his girlfriend’s body preserved on dry ice in a swank Newport Beach hotel room for a year, has returned to his native New Zealand after being released from prison, federal officials said Thursday.

Royds, 49, was paroled in May after serving more than a year and a half of a four-year sentence for felony drug charges. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him June 25, ICE officials said.

Royds, who went by the nickname “Kiwi,” was arrested in March 2008 by Newport Beach police officers. Authorities had been investigating reports that he was selling cocaine at a local bar.

After his arrest, police searched his room at the Fairmont Hotel, where he’d been living for two years. Officers found the frozen body of Monique Trepp, 33. She had been stuffed into a plastic box filled with dry ice.

On Thursday, Royds’ mother, Sally, told the New Zealand news website Otago Daily Times that she was “thrilled” to have her son back in the country. He had yet to visit her in Queenstown but he was in New Zealand, she told the Times.

Trepp, who was from Huntington Beach, was Royds’ girlfriend. She overdosed on cocaine a year before police discovered her body.

Royds told police that he did not report the death because he had outstanding warrants and was dealing drugs. He was not charged with failing to report the death.