Fairfax County, Va., landfill owner Mack “Jack” Slye Crippen has died at the age of 77, with pneumonia cited as the cause of death.
An extensive obituary in the Washington Post describes Crippen as “the colorful owner” of a landfill in Great Falls, Va., “where Russians and the CIA stashed their trash and which he later turned into an exotic animal farm.”
According to the Post, Crippen was a residential housing developer, founded a bank, owned a farmers’ market and served on a county animal control board as well as owning a transfer station in Alexandria, Va., and the Potomac landfill in Dumfries, Va.
At the time of his death, he was most heavily involved in the project to mine the Potomac landfill for saleable portions of the construction debris it contained, with the intention of then redeveloping the land.
Crippen was also well known in northern Virginia for landing his private helicopter in unlikely places, such as near the county courthouse or in department store parking lots.
One of his landfills was known in the late 1970s and the 1980s as the place where the CIA took its shredded paper, as did the Russian Embassy. The Washington Post story notes that the Russians at times would pay Crippen in bottles of vodka.
His establishment of a private animal park also garnered Crippen some attention. The animal park—home to llamas, camels, ostriches and numerous other species—was set up on the site of another former inert landfill in Virginia.