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Suicide pilot crashes plane into Texas tax office
Terry Kirby19 Feb 2010
A software engineer furious with the US tax authorities staged a kamikaze attack on one of their offices.
Joe Stack III, 53, was apparently unhappy with the Internal Revenue and website posting saying: “Nothing changes without a body count. Violence is the only answer.”
He set fire to his home in Austin, Texas, before flying his light aircraft into the building, which housed almost 200 IRS employees, starting a massive fire. One person remains unaccounted for.
Stack had posted 3,000 words on a website, attacking the IRS. He wrote: “Well, Mr Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well. I have had all I can stand,” adding: “I choose not to keep looking over my shoulder at big brother' while he strips my carcass.”
Friends told of a quiet teetotaller who was well liked on the local music scene. They said he never spoke of his anger at his treatment by the IRS.
But in his note, Stack referred to several disputes with the IRS that cost him more than $40,000 and “10 years of my life.” He twice started software companies in California that ultimately were suspended by tax authorities.
He played bass and piano in a country rock band and met his second wife, Sheryl, a pianist, with whom he had a daughter. They would stage piano and jazz recitals at their home.
Michael Cerza, who played with him, said: “I don't know what to base his madness on. It must have been lurking beneath the surface. He did not strike me as having any angular edges at all. He was the guy who would choose not to say anything in a group of people.”
