[2] "Her attraction to Black culture was one thing, but her deep involvement with the Rasta movement and her activities as a rhumba dancer exhibited a certain kind of rebellion...Mahfood did not seem interested in a life of a middle-class light skinned privilege.
Instead, she lived a bohemian existence of a rebel, free spirit, and independent woman at a time in Jamaica of the late '50s and early '60s when her behaviour would have been perceived as nonconformist to the extreme."
Promoter Vere Johns refused to let Count Ossie back Mahfood because he was a Rastafarian, discrimination of this kind being common during the 1950s.
[3] In the early 1960s, Mahfood met Don Drummond, trombone player of the Skatalites, at Count Ossie's Rastafarian commune in the Wareika Hills.
By the time they met, Drummond had schizophrenia[2] and already self-checked himself into Bellevue Hospital in Kingston twice, due to his mental health.
[2] On 31 December 1964, Drummond missed the Skatalites' New Year's Eve concert at La Parisienne in Harbour View, after Mahfood accidentally gave him the wrong medication.
When the police arrived at the house, Mahfood was dead on the bed, with the knife still in her body, and her hand shoved inside the bell of Drummond's trombone.