Danielle Maree Calvert: Public appeal to help solve decades-long family mystery

A teenage runaway left behind an eight-month-old daughter and one big, life-changing question when she died under suspicious circumstances at Norman Park in 1996.

A young Brisbane-born mother desperate to solve a decades-long family mystery is appealing to residents in Brisbane’s south for any information that could reveal the identity of her father.

Marisol Calvert was just eight months old in 1996 when her mother, Danielle Maree Calvert, was found comatose in their apartment on Norman Ave at Norman Park.

By the time her flatmates called emergency services it was too late, and Danielle died in hospital a short time later under “suspicious circumstances”, likely a cocktail of discontinued pain medication and alcohol.

Danielle had been a runaway – a free spirited, fun-loving young woman who escaped from Victoria to Queensland as a teenager in the mid-90s.

Danielle Calvert passed away "under suspicious circumstances" in 1996, when her daughter was just eight months old. If you recognise the woman in this photo, you may be able to help.

The details of her life during that time remain largely a mystery.

According to the bits and pieces of information Marisol has managed to uncover over the years, her mother spent time living in a national park, had several inpatient stints at a mental health facility in Brisbane and eventually took up with a violent man of Cuban descent, some 20 years her senior.

In the wake of Danielle’s death and in the absence of a father, Marisol was returned to Victoria where the premature loss loomed large over her family.

“We’ve been through a lot,” Marisol said.

“I lost a mother, my grandmother lost a daughter, and my uncle lost a sister.

“We’re just a small, broken family.”

Marisol, however, never felt the need for more until she had two children of her own.

“Each time when they hit the eight month mark I just looked at them and thought, imagine being so innocent and so vulnerable and losing everything,” she said.

“As a mother, you’re their whole world.”

Thus began Marisol’s quest to unearth the long forgotten details of her mother’s short life.

“I wish I’d known my mother, I wish there was a video of her so I could know what she sounded like, what her laugh was like, what kind of music she liked,” she said.

“I’m trying to find ways to feel more connected to her.”

Marisol recently took to social media to appeal to residents around the Norman Park area to come forward with information about Danielle, in hopes she may be able to identify and locate her long-lost father.

The post on the Norman Park community page has received more than 45 comments, with one woman already claiming to have lived next door to Danielle in 1994.

“I’d love to be able to find someone to fill in the gaps and tell me what really happened,” she said.

“I might even be able to find out who my father was.

“I could have half brothers and sisters, there could be a whole other family out there, a proper family to call my own and answer all the questions I’ve had about my history.”