Austin Man Crashes Private Plane Into IRS Office

Austin building where the Internal Revenue Service was located. The suspect set his home on fire and then crashed a private plane into the IRS building. There are reported deaths and injuries from the incident.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

February 19, 2010

Man Crashes Plane Into Texas I.R.S. Office

By MICHAEL BRICK
New York Times

AUSTIN, Tex. — Leaving behind a rant against the government, big business and particularly the tax system, a computer engineer smashed a small aircraft into an office building where nearly 200 employees of the Internal Revenue Service were starting their workday Thursday morning, the authorities said.

The pilot, identified as Andrew Joseph Stack III, 53, of north Austin, apparently died in the crash, and one other person was unaccounted for. Late Thursday, two bodies were pulled from the site, though the authorities would not discuss the identities of those found, The Associated Press reported. Two serious injuries were also reported in the crash and subsequent fire, which initially inspired fears of a terrorist attack and drew nationwide attention.

But in place of the typical portrait of a terrorist driven by ideology, Mr. Stack was described as generally easygoing, a talented amateur musician with marital troubles and a maddening grudge against the tax authorities.

“I knew Joe had a hang-up with the I.R.S. on account of them breaking him, taking his savings away,” said Jack Cook, the stepfather of Mr. Stack’s wife, in a telephone interview from his home in Oklahoma. “And that’s undoubtedly the reason he flew the airplane against that building. Not to kill people, but just to damage the I.R.S.”

Within hours of the crash, before the death or even the identity of the pilot had been confirmed, officials ruled out any connection to terrorist groups or causes.

“The main thing I want to put out there is that this is an isolated incident here; there is no cause for alarm,” said the Austin police chief, Art Acevedo, in a televised news conference at midday. Asked how he could be sure, Mr. Acevedo said, “You have to take my word at it, don’t you?”

As the Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation and President Obama received a briefing from his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, federal officials emphasized the same message, describing the case as a criminal inquiry.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the notion of terrorists using small airplanes to crash into buildings has raised a special sort of public anxiety. That was the initial reaction in 2006, when a New York Yankees pitcher and his flight instructor died in a crash in Manhattan. On Thursday the North American Aerospace Defense Command sent two F-16 aircraft to patrol the area before it was determined that the crash was the work of one man.

Mr. Stack’s aircraft, a single-engine fixed-wing Piper PA-28-236 registered in California, took off from Georgetown Municipal Airport, about 25 miles north of Austin, at 9:40 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said.

At 9:56, the plane tore through a seven-story office building at 9430 Research Boulevard, about seven miles northwest of the State Capitol, local authorities said. Flames and smoke engulfed the building, sending big black burned panels to the ground. Emergency medical officials said two men were injured, both in the fire. One was transported to a burn unit in San Antonio. A third office worker was described only as unaccounted for.

Aside from the I.R.S., private organizations including an education center affiliated with St. Edward’s University maintain offices in the building, according to address records. The local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is in a separate part of the complex.

“We can confirm that the building that the plane hit this morning includes I.R.S. offices,” said Terry L. Lemons, a spokesman for the agency. “We have about 190 employees that work at those offices. We’re still in the process of accounting for everyone.”

In a six-page statement signed “Joe Stack (1956-2010)” and posted on a Web site connected to Mr. Stack’s wife, the author singled out the tax agency as a source of suicidal rage, concluding, “Well, Mr. Big Brother I.R.S. man, let’s try something different, take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

Though profane at points, the statement articulated grievances with specific sections of the tax code, corporations, politicians and a local accountant. It appeared to have been written with some deliberation. At one point, the verbs “left” and “abandoned” appear side by side, seemingly an editing choice never settled.

From relatives, friends and neighbors, a portrait emerged of Mr. Stack as a man pushed over the brink by retirement dreams deferred by a long series of financial setbacks.

By the account of Mr. Cook, Mr. Stack was raised in an orphanage in Hershey, Pa., with a brother and sister, leaving the orphanage after high school to attend college. He worked as a software engineer in California, learned to fly and played guitar and piano for recreation. He moved to Austin, playing with a band and at informal gatherings.

Mr. Stack met Mr. Cook’s stepdaughter, the former Sheryl Housh, through musician friends in Austin. After eight months of friendship, they dated and married about three years ago. Both had been previously married.

Mrs. Stack, 50, listed in records at the University of Texas as a graduate student in music performance, brought her own back story to the marriage, having spent several years in the sway of a religious cult before her parents orchestrated a rescue.

On visits to Oklahoma, Mr. Stack took his new in-laws up in his plane. He never spoke of his troubles with the I.R.S., though his wife related them. The family assembled in Austin at Christmas, and Mr. Stack seemed fine, Mr. Cook said.

But in recent weeks Mrs. Stack complained to her parents of an increasingly frightening anger in her husband, straining the marriage, Mr. Cook said. On Wednesday night, Mrs. Stack took her 12-year-old daughter, Margaux, to a hotel to get away from her husband.

They returned on Thursday morning to find their house ablaze, their belongings destroyed. Officials said the house fire was deliberately set, casting Mr. Stack as the primary suspect. But by that point he was gone, airborne.

“This is a shock to me that he would do something like this,” Mr. Cook said. “But you get your anger up, you do it.”

Sewell Chan contributed reporting from Washington.


Anger wasn't obvious to friends, they say

By Steven Kreytak
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 12:08 a.m. Friday, Feb. 19, 2010
Published: 10:24 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010

Roughly three decades of anger and bitterness, much of it aimed at the U.S. tax system, were laid bare in an online diatribe linked to Andrew Joseph Stack III, the Austin man who is believed to have set his house on fire and then flown his airplane into an Austin office building Thursday.

Violence, the note says, was the only answer.

"Nothing changes unless there's a body count," the note says. "By not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change."

Posted on EmbeddedArts.com, a Web site registered to Stack and once used for his software and firmware engineering business, the note, six pages when printed, ends like an obituary: "Joe Stack (1956-2010)."

Authorities declined to confirm its authenticity.

Stack wrote: "If you're reading this, you're no doubt asking yourself, `Why did this have to happen?'"

What follows in the note is a series of stories apparently meant to explain Stack's actions Thursday, when his Piper Cherokee airplane hit an office building on Research Boulevard that houses about 200 Internal Revenue Service employees, including criminal investigators and auditors.

Web site coding shows the note was created Tuesday, edited 27 times, the final time early Thursday morning. In 2,676 words, Stack also rails against large corporations, the Roman Catholic Church, former President George W. Bush and a 1986 tax law that redefined the status of some technology industry contract workers.

Friends and neighbors said they had never heard any of these gripes from the 53-year-old software engineer and former bass player in a local alt-country band.

"We didn't know that he had frustrations and troubles," said Pam Parker of Austin, who had known Stack and his wife, Sheryl, for several years and last spoke to him a few weeks ago. "He always was very easygoing. … He was just a pleasant friendly guy."

Stack graduated from Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pa. The school was founded and endowed by the candy magnate more than 90 years ago as a home and school for orphaned boys. Stack attended Harrisburg Area Community College from 1975 to 1977 but did not graduate, school spokesman Patrick M. Early said.

Stack later married, moved to California and had a daughter who grew up to marry a Norwegian pilot. Parker said Stack went to Norway to visit her and his one or two grandchildren each year.

In his online note, Stack said that in the early 1980s in California, he began participating in "tax code readings and discussions" that focused on tax exemptions, such as ones that "make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the `best', high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the `big boys' were doing," he wrote in the note.

"That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0," Stack wrote, without elaboration. "It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie."

After Stack began working as an engineer in the 1980s, the note says, the 1986 tax law change essentially "declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave."

In the note, Stack wrote about 100-hour workweeks in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, his divorce and the dot-com bust. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he wrote, "our leaders decided that all aircraft were grounded for what seemed like an eternity." Security alerts "made access to my customers prohibitively expensive," he wrote.

"Ironically, after what they had done the government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax dollars … as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich, incompetent cronies WITH MY MONEY!" the note said.

According to previous versions of his Web site recovered online, Stack came to Austin around 2004 and continued seeking work as an engineer.

What he found, according to the note, was "a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance."

Work was hard to come by, and the rates were a third of what he had earned in past years, the note says. Stack claimed in the note that the Justice Department turns a blind eye while a few large companies in Austin collude and drive down wages.

Like Parker, other friends and neighbors said they had no indication that Stack was so frustrated. He married in 2007 and lived in a 2,500-square-foot house in far North Austin, near Metric Boulevard and Parmer Lane, with his wife Sheryl and her daughter, who is about 12.

There his wife taught piano lessons, neighbors said. Parker said Stack's wife is a pianist in the graduate music program at the University of Texas. With Stack playing bass, the couple would put on house concerts for friends, Parker said.

"You wouldn't have pegged him to do anything crazy let alone a big spectacular crazy thing," she said.

Stack also played for a time in the Billy Eli Band with Parker's husband.

Jim Hemphill, also a member of the band, said he flew in Stack's plane once to play a wedding in Conroe.

Referring to the anger revealed in the note, Hemphill said: "I never saw anything like this in Joe."

According to his online note, Stack relied on savings and retirement accounts to survive in Austin. One year he had no income so was not required to file a tax return, the note says.

"The sleazy government … disagreed. But they didn't notify me in time … to launch a legal objection. … Bend over for another $10,000 helping of justice."

Stack wrote that he recently sought tax assistance from an accountant. After he was audited, that accountant neglected to report some of "Sheryl's unreported income," the note says.

"That left me … trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax related," the note says. "The end result is… well, just look around. I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different," the note says. "I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well."

skreytak@statesman.com; 912-2946

Additional material from The Associated Press and staff writer Patrick Beach.


Stunned workers find way out of burning building

By Kevin Robbins
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 10:27 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010

William Winnie glanced to the north. His eyes locked on an airplane drawing near.

An airplane? Winnie thought.

Here?

He watched the doomed Piper Cherokee through the tinted window of an office building on Research Boulevard called Echelon 1. Winnie noticed the wings: level. It was flying very fast.

"It looked like it was coming right in," he said.

Winnie and three of his colleagues at the Internal Revenue Service had gathered Tuesday morning in a small third-floor room for a recertification program to operate an automated external defibrillator. The colleagues, all revenue agents with the federal agency responsible for tax collection and tax-law enforcement, wore casual clothes and white identification badges around their necks.

On the floor above and the floor below, IRS field agents, information technology specialists and criminal investigators went about the morning as a man authorities believe was Andrew Joseph Stack III banked the Cherokee south from an airport in Georgetown and aimed the nose toward Austin.

Winnie, 56, with thin white hair pulled into a short ponytail, was standing when he saw the plane. He said he had no time to hide or shout a warning.

The Cherokee dipped slightly below the third floor and to the left. The building shook, Winnie said. Glass splintered, and particles from the ceiling spiraled to the floor like snow.

As the Cherokee approached, Rene Sadlier sat unaware at his desk on the first floor of Echelon I, sipping coffee.

"It was 9:51 or 9:52," he said.

The national account representative for ATR International said he felt a concussion. He thought a transformer had exploded.

"I just jumped under my desk," he said.

The drop ceiling fell around him. The desk collapsed. Sadlier fumbled his way outside. He left his car keys.

He called his wife.

"The building just blew up," he told her.

Hundreds of people worked in Echelon I. Few actually saw the Cherokee plunge into their workplace.

But many motorists and bystanders watched the small, single-engine plane dive into the dark-windowed building from a springlike blue sky.

Gerry Cullen walked through the parking lot at Marie Callender's, a restaurant on the north side of U.S. 183 . He heard an unmistakable sound.

"It scared the hell out of me," he said.

A 66-year-old flight instructor, Cullen recognized the noise as well as he would his own voice. He said he'd spent about 400 hours in the cockpit of a Cherokee, teaching slow-speed takeoffs and stability in the air.

The Cherokee he saw Tuesday knifed through the sky — its four-cylinder engine at full whine, its wing flaps positioned for pure speed, its throttle shoved up against the instrument panel.

Cullen estimated that the plane was flying at 150 miles an hour, and so low the fixed-wheel landing gear appeared to brush the light poles in the parking lot. The Cherokee's typical cruising speed is 115, he said.

Any faster, he said, and "you have to fight them. They don't want to dive. They don't want to go fast."

Cullen said he entertained that very thought as he watched the white underside of the fuselage pass overhead and vaporize against the building in a swell of fire.

Dr. Todd Nash saw the Cherokee through the window of his Dodge Ram pickup. He knew that silhouette.

The 39-year-old chief of the emergency department at Seton Northwest Hospital has flown a similar small plane. Flying is his hobby, and he paid attention to detail.

Driving north on Mopac Boulevard (Loop 1) toward U.S. 183, Nash realized that the Cherokee had "violently started to descend." The scene riveted Nash. He wondered whether the pilot were trying to land on Loop 360 or in the woods nearby.

"I thought he lost control of the aircraft," Nash said.

The Cherokee dipped under the horizon. "And there was a big puff of smoke," Nash said.

The physician called Dr. Christopher Ziebell, chief of emergency medicine at University Medical Center Brackenridge, the city's only Level 1 trauma center for adults. Nash warned his counterpart to get ready for a busy morning.

Chris Messer, who turned 27 on Thursday, said the Cherokee flew right in front of his car on the flyover between Mopac Boulevard and U.S. 183.

He felt the plane's impact through his steering wheel.

"The heat came through my air vents," he said.

Lyric Olivarez worked in Echelon IV, a building that shared a parking lot with Echelon I.

A woman ran in, Olivarez said.

There's been a bomb.

Olivarez, 22, rushed to the fire escape. Once outside, she heard voices in distress.

"People were screaming and crying for us to help them," she said.

Up on the third floor of Echelon I, Dawn Goldberg sat at a computer terminal. She heard a loud, muffled sound that reminded her of nothing she had ever heard.

"The building shook violently," said Goldberg, an IRS revenue agent based in Houston.

"There were things falling off of the ceiling."

Goldberg joined the other IRS employees in a stairwell so dark they had to feel for the handrail. The evacuation was calm, she said. Her Austin colleagues clearly had been drilled.

She found her way to the corner office where she'd left her purse. She opened the door. The room was burning. Goldberg located her purse. She picked it up. It was on fire. It burned a finger on her right hand.

She saw an IRS employee being led to an ambulance.

He was wearing no shirt. His back was burned.

Goldberg forgot about her finger.

"He's going to be OK," she said.

"He was talking."

William Winnie, the revenue agent training on the third floor, said the concussion made the building move, like the ground had shifted under his shoes.

"I didn't lose my footing," he said. "But it was enough to knock people who were sitting to the floor."

Winnie and his colleagues remembered the evacuation plan. They assembled at the middle stairwell and filed down the risers. The lights were out. People were calm.

"There was very little panic," Winnie said.

He heard the unsettling klaxon of the fire alarm in Echelon I. He followed his colleagues to daylight, careful to step around the glass.

They left the building through the doors opposite the dark windows facing U.S. 183.

With every step, the IRS employees got farther from the destroyed Cherokee and the damage it caused.

They walked quickly through the shady parking lot, through the pleasant morning air under a sky growing dark with soot, and across the street, where firetrucks and ambulances began to block their view of the smoke and fire inside Echelon 1.

krobbins@statesman.com; 445-3602

Additional material from Mary Ann Roser, Melissa Taboada, Chuck Lindell and Barry Harrell.


Stunned workers find way out of burning building

By Kevin Robbins
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 10:27 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010

William Winnie glanced to the north. His eyes locked on an airplane drawing near.

An airplane? Winnie thought.

Here?

He watched the doomed Piper Cherokee through the tinted window of an office building on Research Boulevard called Echelon 1. Winnie noticed the wings: level. It was flying very fast.

"It looked like it was coming right in," he said.

Winnie and three of his colleagues at the Internal Revenue Service had gathered Tuesday morning in a small third-floor room for a recertification program to operate an automated external defibrillator. The colleagues, all revenue agents with the federal agency responsible for tax collection and tax-law enforcement, wore casual clothes and white identification badges around their necks.

On the floor above and the floor below, IRS field agents, information technology specialists and criminal investigators went about the morning as a man authorities believe was Andrew Joseph Stack III banked the Cherokee south from an airport in Georgetown and aimed the nose toward Austin.

Winnie, 56, with thin white hair pulled into a short ponytail, was standing when he saw the plane. He said he had no time to hide or shout a warning.

The Cherokee dipped slightly below the third floor and to the left. The building shook, Winnie said. Glass splintered, and particles from the ceiling spiraled to the floor like snow.

As the Cherokee approached, Rene Sadlier sat unaware at his desk on the first floor of Echelon I, sipping coffee.

"It was 9:51 or 9:52," he said.

The national account representative for ATR International said he felt a concussion. He thought a transformer had exploded.

"I just jumped under my desk," he said.

The drop ceiling fell around him. The desk collapsed. Sadlier fumbled his way outside. He left his car keys.

He called his wife.

"The building just blew up," he told her.

Hundreds of people worked in Echelon I. Few actually saw the Cherokee plunge into their workplace.

But many motorists and bystanders watched the small, single-engine plane dive into the dark-windowed building from a springlike blue sky.

Gerry Cullen walked through the parking lot at Marie Callender's, a restaurant on the north side of U.S. 183 . He heard an unmistakable sound.

"It scared the hell out of me," he said.

A 66-year-old flight instructor, Cullen recognized the noise as well as he would his own voice. He said he'd spent about 400 hours in the cockpit of a Cherokee, teaching slow-speed takeoffs and stability in the air.

The Cherokee he saw Tuesday knifed through the sky — its four-cylinder engine at full whine, its wing flaps positioned for pure speed, its throttle shoved up against the instrument panel.

Cullen estimated that the plane was flying at 150 miles an hour, and so low the fixed-wheel landing gear appeared to brush the light poles in the parking lot. The Cherokee's typical cruising speed is 115, he said.

Any faster, he said, and "you have to fight them. They don't want to dive. They don't want to go fast."

Cullen said he entertained that very thought as he watched the white underside of the fuselage pass overhead and vaporize against the building in a swell of fire.

Dr. Todd Nash saw the Cherokee through the window of his Dodge Ram pickup. He knew that silhouette.

The 39-year-old chief of the emergency department at Seton Northwest Hospital has flown a similar small plane. Flying is his hobby, and he paid attention to detail.

Driving north on Mopac Boulevard (Loop 1) toward U.S. 183, Nash realized that the Cherokee had "violently started to descend." The scene riveted Nash. He wondered whether the pilot were trying to land on Loop 360 or in the woods nearby.

"I thought he lost control of the aircraft," Nash said.

The Cherokee dipped under the horizon. "And there was a big puff of smoke," Nash said.

The physician called Dr. Christopher Ziebell, chief of emergency medicine at University Medical Center Brackenridge, the city's only Level 1 trauma center for adults. Nash warned his counterpart to get ready for a busy morning.

Chris Messer, who turned 27 on Thursday, said the Cherokee flew right in front of his car on the flyover between Mopac Boulevard and U.S. 183.

He felt the plane's impact through his steering wheel.

"The heat came through my air vents," he said.

Lyric Olivarez worked in Echelon IV, a building that shared a parking lot with Echelon I.

A woman ran in, Olivarez said.

There's been a bomb.

Olivarez, 22, rushed to the fire escape. Once outside, she heard voices in distress.

"People were screaming and crying for us to help them," she said.

Up on the third floor of Echelon I, Dawn Goldberg sat at a computer terminal. She heard a loud, muffled sound that reminded her of nothing she had ever heard.

"The building shook violently," said Goldberg, an IRS revenue agent based in Houston.

"There were things falling off of the ceiling."

Goldberg joined the other IRS employees in a stairwell so dark they had to feel for the handrail. The evacuation was calm, she said. Her Austin colleagues clearly had been drilled.

She found her way to the corner office where she'd left her purse. She opened the door. The room was burning. Goldberg located her purse. She picked it up. It was on fire. It burned a finger on her right hand.

She saw an IRS employee being led to an ambulance.

He was wearing no shirt. His back was burned.

Goldberg forgot about her finger.

"He's going to be OK," she said.

"He was talking."

William Winnie, the revenue agent training on the third floor, said the concussion made the building move, like the ground had shifted under his shoes.

"I didn't lose my footing," he said. "But it was enough to knock people who were sitting to the floor."

Winnie and his colleagues remembered the evacuation plan. They assembled at the middle stairwell and filed down the risers. The lights were out. People were calm.

"There was very little panic," Winnie said.

He heard the unsettling klaxon of the fire alarm in Echelon I. He followed his colleagues to daylight, careful to step around the glass.

They left the building through the doors opposite the dark windows facing U.S. 183.

With every step, the IRS employees got farther from the destroyed Cherokee and the damage it caused.

They walked quickly through the shady parking lot, through the pleasant morning air under a sky growing dark with soot, and across the street, where firetrucks and ambulances began to block their view of the smoke and fire inside Echelon 1.

krobbins@statesman.com; 445-3602

Additional material from Mary Ann Roser, Melissa Taboada, Chuck Lindell and Barry Harrell.