Dove Cameron Reveals How the Murder of Her Childhood Best Friend, 9, Changed Her Life 'Forever': 'I Still Have Issues' By Ilana Kaplan

Dove Cameron opened up about one of the most traumatic events of her life.

On the Wednesday, Feb. 4 episode of Call Her Daddy, the “Breakfast” singer reflected on the murder of her childhood friend Hayley at 9 years old at the hands of her father and how it changed her life.

Cameron, 30, recalled how she met her childhood friend Hayley when they were 2 years old, growing up in Bainbridge Island, Wash.

“Some little girls they meet each other, and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s like you, and it’s funny,” she said of their similarities, noting that she “rarely talks about this.”

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Cameron adds, “Not because it’s a problem to talk about, but just … it’s so not the first thing that people usually ask me.”

The “Boyfriend” artist recalled Hayley’s parents eventually going through a “messy” divorce.

“I had stayed with her dad for quite a lot of the summer before [the murder] happened,” Cameron recalled. “And I think even at 8, it was like a dark energy. He was a very angry man.”

The 56 Days star recalled finding out Hayley had been murdered one day when she was home sick from school in the third grade. At the time, Cameron picked up the landline at her parents’ house and was listening in on the call to her parents about Hayley, which came from her and her late friend’s preschool principal.

“She basically said like, ‘This is going to be a really, really disturbing call. Hayley and [her sister] Kelsey are gone. Steve is gone, and he took the girls with him,'” said the singer and actress.

Cameron added, “They heard me like express some sort of child noise, like a gasp. And then they came in and and we just didn’t get out of bed for two days.”

For the Liv and Maddie alum, “it was so impossible to process.”

After Hayley’s death, Cameron’s parents tried to put her in therapy at the time. “I was very very very very very disturbed by knowing someone for all that time and being raised around them and then realizing that they are capable of doing something so harrowing,” she said.

Cameron said that the experience of losing her friend “fissured” her brain and how she processes things. “I still have issues,” she said.

In an April 2025 episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Cameron opened up about her mental health struggles and how she had “full panic attacks” as a young actress on Disney Channel’s Liv and Maddie.

“There was so much going on in my personal life,” said Cameron, whose father died by suicide just before she began working on the series, at the time. “That’s going to affect any kid. When you’re 15 and that happens, it changes the course of your life.”

During those years, she struggled to understand her father’s death.

“There was no way for me to wrap my head around it. Understand it, conceptualize it. We were at his funeral, and then like, on Bainbridge Island. And then a couple months later, I was at The Grove with people asking me to sign glossies. I didn’t know how to really reconcile with that,” said Cameron at the time.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.