On June 15, a GoFundMe set up by a man claiming to be Daveigh Chase’s boyfriend put the former child star’s desperate plight in the public spotlight.
A day later, the 35-year-old actress, best known for her role in the horror film The Ring, was dead.
By then, Chase was severely emaciated and battling AIDS and drug abuse after years of addiction and homelessness.
Her death was followed by a backlash against her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, 38, who was accused by her family and former manager of trying to profit from her death.
They wondered why Hernandez launched the crowdfunding appeal when Chase had a SAG trust account that could have covered her medical expenses.
They also accused him of leading her deeper into a world of drugs.
Now, in an exclusive sit-down interview, Hernandez has walked back those allegations and spoken on camera for the first time about his relationship with Chase, their final days together and the circumstances surrounding her death.
With a cursive “Daveigh” tattoo above his eye, Hernandez also revealed that he proposed to Chase before her death — and she said yes.
He told the Daily Mail why he believes he, and not her family, should inherit her $400,000 estate.
Actress Daveigh Chase died June 16 of AIDS, with chronic drug use being a contributing factor, according to the LA County Medical Examiner’s Office. She was 35
Hernandez said he and Daveigh were planning to get married. Since the actresses’ deaths, Hernandez has faced criticism over a GoFundMe page he set up shortly before her death
After months of communication, Hernandez finally agreed to be interviewed last week. We met in LA’s Elysian Park, a special place he and Chase visited, he said, “to escape.”
Hernandez recalled meeting Chase for the first time in 2021 at a mutual friend’s house.
He said he had no idea Chase was a celebrity, noting that she had short hair at the time and hadn’t been in a movie since 2016.
“We hung out all night,” Hernandez recalled.
Within two months they were a couple.
Their relationship began at a time when Chase’s family claimed she was already in deep trouble.
They say she was addicted to drugs and homeless, living on Skid Row and moving between tents around LA.
However, Hernandez paints a radically different picture of the life they shared.
“She was always happy,” he said. ‘She made me very happy.’
He insists they have never been homeless and says they voluntarily lived together in his RV for five years.
Hernandez described a nomadic life of road trips with their two dogs and visiting his mother in East LA when the couple needed a home-cooked meal and shower.
In 2024, he proposed to Chase and said she accepted. In February 2026, he had her name tattooed above his eye.
Hernandez rejected suggestions that he was responsible for Chase’s drug use, or that he stood by her as her health deteriorated.
Hernandez said Daveigh was surprised and happy when he got a tattoo with her name.
Daveigh Chase was arrested multiple times and was in and out of LA jails after leaving her career in Hollywood
He claimed he never used Chase or saw her use drugs during their relationship.
“Anyone who knew us would know,” Hernandez said of the family’s allegations. ‘Especially when it came to me, they knew I would never let that happen. It’s 100 percent not true.’
Hernandez admitted that he knew Chase was “smoking” drugs, including fentanyl, before they started dating. Chase had told him that she used them to deal with painful memories from her past.
‘She tried to forget her past and what she went through. She said it made it easier for her,” Hernandez claimed.
He was referring in part to an alleged 2021 incident in which Chase said she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by an unknown man at a Los Angeles hotel. She never reported the alleged assault to the police.
Hernandez said that instead of enabling Chase’s addiction, he spent much of their relationship trying to keep her away from drugs and protecting her from the things she was struggling with.
But the image of Chase in the months before her death was very different.
Hernandez claimed that he and Daveigh were never homeless and lived together in his RV
Hernandez told the Daily Mail that he decided to finally break his silence because he wanted her fans to know that she was cared for and surrounded by him and his family.
In footage filmed in 2025, Chase appeared severely emaciated and in extremely poor health. The actress’ father, John Schwallier, says the video makes Hernandez’s story hard to believe.
‘[Roy] “I had to know how sick Daveigh was because in that video she only looked like she weighed 80 pounds,” Schwallier told the Daily Mail.
Cathy Chase has also described her daughter in the footage as extremely weak, saying she was ‘nothing but skin and bones’.
Hernandez insists Chase was fed and cared for, but says she sometimes hid food and resisted going to the hospital until it was too late.
But Chase’s decline had begun years before she met Hernandez.
Her mother Cathy said her downward spiral began after a motorcycle accident around 2016 in which Daveigh injured her back.
She was prescribed powerful painkillers, which Cathy said marked the beginning of an addiction that eventually progressed to stronger drugs.
From 2018 to 2024, Chase was in and out of prison for drug possession and other charges.
Cathy said that when she first visited her daughter behind bars, she barely recognized her, which she attributed to the dramatic change in the grip drugs had taken over her life.
But Hernandez suggested that her relationship with her family and experiences growing up also played a role in her decline, as did the pressures of growing up in Hollywood.
Hernandez said Chase rarely spoke about her father and claimed she told him she believed her father was dead because her mother allegedly told her so.
Chase’s relationship with her parents is now at the heart of the bitter legal dispute over who should have access to her estate.
Hernandez said that while Chase was in jail, her mother once suggested she give her money to her younger brother because she “didn’t do anything with this.”
“I would just tell her, ‘Don’t listen to your mother,’” Hernandez recalled.
The award-winning actress, seen here with mother Cathy, showed promise from an early age and was ready for Hollywood stardom
John Schwallier, pictured here with Daveigh, claimed his ex-wife kept their daughter from him for years
Chase died with an estate worth about $400,000, including remnants of commercials, movies and television shows that she apparently never collected.
During a hearing Wednesday in a Downtown LA courtroom, Chase’s parents and their attorneys told a judge they planned to move forward with competing petitions over control of her estate.
Her former manager, John Ryan, is also embroiled in the legal battle. Last week, Ryan filed a declaration with the court supporting a fiduciary to take over as administrator of Chase’s estate.
Ryan and his company are also looking to recover money he claims was owed to him while he served as Chase’s manager.
During our interview, Hernandez also laid claim to her legacy, presenting himself as the person closest to Chase during the final years of her life.
He claims Chase told him she wanted her money to go to him or animal charities, and that she didn’t believe either of her parents deserved it.
“She and I never really cared about the money,” Hernandez claimed.
“I know she probably would have wanted me to have it, but we had talked about that before. She wanted to take the money and go on a trip to get us out of here.’
Hernandez has yet to file documents with the court to obtain money from Chase’s estate.
Daveigh in 2012 at the height of her career after a string of high-profile film and TV roles
Daveigh Chase and Naomi Watts in the 2002 film The Ring
He claimed Chase was afraid to collect money she owed from film and television residuals because she feared her mother would find out.
‘I told her I was going to help her [get the checks]but she would say her mother would ‘go crazy,'” Hernandez said.
“If anyone knew she had it, she thought her mother would probably look for it and take it from her.”
Hernandez insists the ugly battle over money shows the fractured family life Chase faced.
“That just made me more aware of what Daveigh went through when she was young,” Hernandez said.
He said Chase would refuse when he suggested calling her mother.
‘Now I know more or less why.’
The Daily Mail has contacted Cathy Chase for comment.
Chase’s parents told the Daily Mail that Hernandez’s story about their daughter should be scrutinized. He has also had his own run-ins with the law.
Hernandez pleaded no contest to a 2024 firearms possession charge and was sentenced to three days in jail in March 2026.
When asked about his criminal history, Hernandez declined to comment.
Hernandez said Chase was “up and down” during the last two weeks of her life in June, which she spent in the hospital.
He remembered her struggling to communicate as dried blood and sores filled her mouth.
It was during her final days, Hernandez says, that they came up with the idea for the GoFundMe.
Hernandez, pictured with his mother, in Elysian Park in Los Angeles. Hernandez said Daveigh was loved by him and his family
The day before Chase died, Hernandez claims she was coherent enough to discuss what would happen when she left the hospital.
He said they discussed setting up a GoFundMe to raise money to help her live a comfortable life after her discharge.
Hernandez claims he didn’t receive any of the $4,500 they raised.
However, the next morning, Chase’s condition suddenly worsened.
Doctors told Hernandez she had only hours to live.
“They called me the next day and told me in the morning she only had a few hours left,” Hernandez said, fighting back tears.
“I thought, ‘What do you mean? She was perfectly fine when I left!'”
Her full autopsy report is still pending, including toxicology results.
It is also unclear when Chase contracted HIV or when her diagnosis progressed to AIDS.
When asked about his health, Hernandez replied, “I’m doing well.”
Questions also remain about how long Chase was seriously ill before she was hospitalized and whether more could have been done to intervene as her weight and health declined.
Hernandez claimed Chase refused to get treatment even when he and his mother encouraged her to go.
“I could only tell her so much. “You can’t force someone to go if they don’t want to go,” he said.
Sitting in the park where he and Chase had spent so much time together, Hernandez remembered the last words she said to him before she died.
“She told me, ‘I’m not afraid,’” he said.
“She said, ‘You’re not afraid, are you?'”
“I told her, ‘No, you’re right. I’m not afraid.”
