Obituaries of note

ROBERT PARISIEN, 56, a former FBI agent who planted the bugs that yielded the first recording of a Mafia induction ceremony, died Monday while scuba diving from his boat near Kettle Island off the Massachusetts coast. A heart attack is suspected. He captured mobsters taking a blood oath and pledging their loyalty and silence at a Medford, Mass., house in 1989. The tape was a critical piece of evidence used to prosecute more than a dozen members of the New England Mafia in the 1990s.

PAUL NGEI, 81, one of the heroes of Kenya's independence movement, died Aug. 15 in Nairobi, said an official at M.P. Shah Hospital. Along with Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, Mr. Ngei was one of the "Kapenguria Six," who served prison terms in colonial days as leaders of the Mau Mau rebellion, a violent revolt against British colonial rule. Though eventually defeated, the rebellion helped force Britain to give independence to Kenya. After his release from prison, Mr. Ngei won a seat in parliament and served for 27 years as a cabinet minister.

DONALD JUSTICE, 78, an elder of American poetry whose formalist verse and teaching skills were equally acclaimed, died Aug. 6 in Iowa City, Iowa. The Miami native's work was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and a Bollingen award in 1991. He was a fellow and past chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a former University of Florida faculty member. The last of 14 volumes of his poetry, Collected Poems, will be issued by Knopf on Aug. 18, the publisher announced.

JUNE ELIZABETH KAY CAMPBELL, 79, the mother of North Carolina State Auditor Ralph Campbell Jr. and former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, died Aug. 19 in Raleigh, N.C.

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