Deportation threat for NZer who kept body on ice

The mother of Stephen Royds, the New Zealander who kept his girlfriend's body on dry ice for nearly a year in the United States, says she is pleased he opted not to fight drug charges in California.

"Thank goodness -- there was no point in fighting it.

"We knew he was going to do some time," Sally Royds told The Dominion Post from her home in Queenstown.

Royds, 46, pleaded guilty yesterday to two drug charges in Orange County Superior Court and was jailed for four years.

Credit for time served and good behaviour while in custody means he could have a little more than three years left to serve.

He was arrested in March at the Fairmont Hotel in Newport Beach near Los Angeles after police found him with 54 grams of cocaine bundled in dozens of small packets.

A search of his room turned up the body of his girlfriend, Monique Felicia Trepp, 33, stuffed in a plastic tub and preserved with dry ice.