According to court documents, Royds told police he had been worried he’d be arrested if Trepp’s body was discovered, so he preserved it in his room, for nearly a year before it was discovered.
Royds was never charged in connection with Trepp’s death and was sentenced to four years in prison for his drug conviction.
10 Janene Johns conviction: Many in the community were touched in 2008 by the case of Janene Johns and Candice Tift.
Johns, an Irvine woman who had lost her husband in July 2006 after an 18-month battle with cancer, was transformed into a villain in many people’s eyes a month later when she fatally struck Tift with her car as Tift rode her bike on the West Coast Highway sidewalk. Others pointed to her contributions to the Irvine community to show another side of Johns.
Both Tift’s and Johns’ family members readily admitted there was nothing in this case that wasn’t tragic. Battling mental issues in August 2006, Johns, under the influence of sleeping pills and a cough suppressant, got behind the wheel of her Lexus to drive herself to the hospital. She never made it. Instead, she hit Tift, an Eastbluff Elementary School teacher and Costa Mesa resident, before she could get there.
During an emotional trial this year, Johns’ kids said their mother’s mental deterioration started after their father’s death, and Tift’s husband, mother and siblings aimed to humanize her. But Johns was found guilty of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. She was sentenced to six years in prison.
