Body in dry ice was in small tub

When police found a plastic, 2-by-3-foot bin at the Fairmont Newport Beach hotel last month, they were looking for drugs.

But they found something far different when they reached into the container.

As they rummaged inside the plastic tub, they came across not drugs but a woman’s body packed in dry ice, according to a search warrant that was recently made public.

As Newport Beach Police Det. Robert Watts removed a cloth and saw blond hair and the top of a human head, he said, he backed away.

He knew they would need a far broader search warrant, one that went beyond looking for drugs and contraband.

The Orange County coroner believes Monique Felicia Trepp, 33, died of a drug overdose. Stephen David Royds, who had been living in the hotel for years -- much of that time with Trepp -- was arrested March 6.

He is being held on drug charges but isn’t a suspect in her death.

In Royds’ hotel room police found a blue electric reciprocating saw on the bed and hundreds of photographs of a blond woman throughout the room.

Royds, a 46-year-old New Zealand native, was reportedly a champion skier who moved to the United States about 20 years ago to pursue the sport but eventually turned to dealing cocaine, authorities said.

He and Trepp have been described by authorities as drug abusers who used the Fairmont as a $150- to-$200-a-night crash pad.

Police began investigating Royds after a police informant allegedly bought cocaine from him at the Classic Q, a Newport Beach bar, the affidavit stated.

He allegedly sold the drug in small coin envelopes to the informant and an undercover officer.

Royds was followed to the Fairmont, where he entered room 966.

As part of the drug investigation, police obtained a warrant to search the room, where they made the grisly discovery.

Police arrested Royds after they found several bindles of a white powdery substance resembling cocaine in his possession.

As they entered the room, Royds became so distraught that he was taken to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian and treated for an unspecified condition.

While in the room, police said they smelled a pungent odor coming from the plastic bin, Watts wrote.

“As we moved the items inside the container, a small squirt of a reddish brown substance resembling blood landed” on a detective’s arm, the affidavit stated.

Royds was interviewed in jail by the Orange County Register, and he explained that he had kept his girlfriend on ice “for religious reasons,” but didn’t elaborate.

david.reyes@latimes.com