Nearly two weeks after the world learned that Daveigh Chase had died, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has now provided an official answer to the question fans had been asking since the news first broke.
Daveigh Chase, the actress remembered by an entire generation for voicing Lilo in Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” and for crawling out of a television screen as Samara Morgan in “The Ring,” died on June 16 at a Los Angeles hospital.
According to the medical examiner’s report confirmed by TMZ, the primary cause of death was acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, commonly known as AIDS, with chronic polysubstance use listed as a significant contributing condition, and the manner of death ruled natural. She was 35 years old.
The finding closes one chapter of a story that had already become difficult to read in the days following her death, but it also reframes parts of it.
Her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, who announced her death on June 17, initially said she had died from complications of meningitis and that an infection in her blood had caused septic issues that led to her body shutting down.
That account wasn’t fabricated. It simply wasn’t the full picture, since the official report does not contradict that she experienced those conditions during her final hospitalization, but identifies AIDS as the underlying cause that allowed her health to deteriorate to that point, with chronic drug use listed as a contributing factor.
As medical experts have noted, the average lifespan for someone living with untreated AIDS is roughly three years, and that window can shrink considerably depending on a person’s overall health.
What the Medical Examiner’s Report Actually Says
It’s worth being precise about what this report does and does not establish, because the terminology involved can be easy to misread.
The World Health Organization explains that HIV is a virus that attacks the body’s immune system, and AIDS occurs at the most advanced stage of that infection.
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Clinic defines polysubstance use as using more than one drug or substance at the same time or within a short period of time.
The medical examiner’s document does not specify which substances were involved, and according to NBC News, the case technically remains open.
What the report does make clear is that Chase’s body had been fighting an advanced, untreated immune condition, and that years of drug use compounded the damage rather than caused it outright.
The picture that’s emerged since her death paints a portrait of someone who had largely disappeared from public view long before any of this became known.
Her father, John Schwallier, confirmed to NBC News that Chase had been homeless and was living near the Los Angeles General Medical Center, the hospital where she ultimately died.
Sources told TMZ that she had been living in an RV with Hernandez in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles, just minutes from Skid Row, before she was hospitalized earlier in June, and other reports suggested she had spent time in or around encampments in downtown Los Angeles.
Friends who had grown increasingly worried about her believed her weight had dropped to as low as 75 pounds in the months before her death.
Her father’s account also raises questions that the medical findings don’t fully resolve. Schwallier told NBC News he was unclear about the nature of his daughter’s relationship with Hernandez, saying, “I don’t know how much of a boyfriend he was to her,” and adding that he had seen a video of her the previous September, noting, “I don’t know why he wasn’t getting her medical help then.”
Schwallier had previously told the New York Times that he hadn’t spoken to his daughter since she was 19, and described her as having been severely malnourished while living on the streets.
Those are difficult words from a parent trying to make sense of a daughter’s final years from a distance, and they underline just how isolated Chase appears to have become from the people who knew her best.
A GoFundMe Campaign Sparked a Public Dispute Before the Cause of Death Was Even Known
Even before the medical examiner weighed in, Chase’s death had already become tangled in a separate, more public conflict.
Shortly after her passing, Hernandez set up a GoFundMe campaign and wrote that Chase had been diagnosed with meningitis and several serious blood infections, describing her condition before she died as having become critical.
In the campaign description, he wrote about meeting her after what he described as a difficult childhood and a painful falling out with her family, and said, “When we met, I promised to protect her and give her the love and comfort she deserved.”
That framing did not sit well with people who had known Chase for years. Her former manager and longtime friend, John Ryan, issued a lengthy statement to Deadline urging the public not to donate, stating plainly, “Daveigh’s estate has plenty of means to pay for the cremation,” and adding that her father, John Schwallier, is her next of kin and “never signed any paperwork over to this so called boyfriend.”
Ryan went further, alleging that Hernandez had “brought her into the hospital in terrible condition and didn’t let any of the family know until she passed so he can control the dialogue,” and said, “I find it disgusting that this man is using our friend’s tragic passing to get a few bucks for he and his family.”
He didn’t soften his language even when describing what he believed Hernandez was trying to accomplish.
“This guy’s trying to make it look like a Romeo and Juliet situation to benefit his own pockets,” Ryan told Deadline, while also describing Chase as “the sweetest girl” who had gotten “mixed up with the wrong crowd.”
Ryan also told TMZ that neither Chase’s family nor her close friends recognized Hernandez at all, saying, “I can confirm Daveigh has a SAG trust account with more than enough funds to cover all medical and related expenses.”
Hernandez did not let those accusations go unanswered. He defended himself against Ryan’s claims, telling TMZ that the allegations that the GoFundMe was illegitimate were “100 percent” false, maintaining that the fundraiser was created to give Chase a sense of home and peace during a painful chapter of her life.
He later said he intended to use the funds raised to give Chase a “proper memorial.” The dispute never reached a clean resolution, and with the medical examiner’s findings now public, it remains unclear whether the new information will change how either side characterizes those final weeks.
Remembering the Career Before the Headlines Took Over
It’s easy, in a story this heavy, to lose sight of why so many people felt this loss so personally in the first place.
Born Daveigh Elizabeth Chase-Schwallier in Las Vegas in 1990 and raised in Albany, Oregon, she began her acting career in 1998 with an appearance on “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” before going on to roles in “Charmed,” “The Practice,” and “ER.”
She starred in 2001’s “Donnie Darko,” and in 2002 took on the role of Samara Morgan in “The Ring,” a performance that earned her an MTV Movie Award for Best Villain and turned her into a fixture of early 2000s horror.
That same year, she became the voice of Lilo Pelekai, a role that introduced her to an entirely different audience and, for many fans, remains her most beloved.
Her career continued for over a decade afterward, with Chase eventually stepping away from Hollywood by 2017. What followed in the years since has only become clear in fragments, pieced together by reporters and by people who tried, and ultimately failed, to reach her in time.
Ryan said he, along with Chase’s stepsister and a private investigator, had spent months searching for her, and at one point believed he was close to getting her into a rehabilitation program in Costa Rica before she disappeared again.
“We were so close to finding her,” he said. “Daveigh was the sweetest and brightest light in Hollywood. I can’t believe this is real. Her legacy and work will live on forever.”
The official cause of death doesn’t erase the confusion and conflict that surrounded Chase’s final months, and it likely won’t end the dispute over the GoFundMe campaign either.
What it does offer is a clearer, medically grounded account of how a woman once known to millions of children as the voice of a beloved Disney character came to spend her last years largely unseen, struggling with addiction and housing instability far from the spotlight she once knew.
For the people who grew up watching her on screen, that’s the part of this story that may be hardest to sit with.
