Texas plane-crash pilot left anti-IRS note on Web

AUSTIN, Texas — Why Andrew Joseph Stack flew his plane into an office building isn't a mystery.

"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," he wrote.

That's the end of a lengthy missive that Stack, 53, a computer-software engineer, finished early Thursday and posted on a Web site.

Hours later, he set fire to his red brick home in Austin. He then drove to the Georgetown Municipal Airport, climbed into his single-engine, fixed-wing Piper PA-28 registered in California, and took off. He had no flight plan but did have a target: a seven-story office building in northwest Austin that houses about 190 Internal Revenue Service workers.

Thirteen people on the ground were injured, two critically, in an explosive crash that heavily damaged the seven-story building, said Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo. Emergency crews recovered two bodies from the wreckage. The pilot was presumed dead, and one worker in the building had been missing.

The crash sparked fears of another terrorist attack when witnesses saw a low-flying plane heading for the building minutes before 10 a.m.

Within hours of the crash, 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," Acevedo said in a televised news conference at midday.

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

Stack, who went by Joe, was described as generally easygoing, a talented amateur musician with marital troubles and a grudge against the tax authorities.

"I knew Joe had a hangup with the IRS on account of them breaking him, taking his savings away," Jack Cook, the stepfather of Stack's wife, said 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 IRS."

Aside from the IRS, 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 FBI is in a separate part of the complex.

Though profane at points, the six-page statement posted on the Web and signed "Joe Stack (1956-2010)" articulated grievances with specific sections of the tax code, corporations, politicians and a local accountant.

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

By the account of Cook, 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.

In the mid-2000s, Stack met 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.

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

In recent weeks Sheryl Stack complained to her parents of an increasingly frightening anger in her husband, straining the marriage, Cook said. On Wednesday night, Sheryl Stack took her daughter, Margaux, 12, to a hotel to get away from her husband. They returned Thursday morning to find their house ablaze.

Material from the Los Angeles Times and The Dallas Morning News is included in this report.