Friends didn't see pilot's passion for IRS feud

[February 19, 2010]  AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Joe Stack felt the federal government -- especially its tax code -- robbed him of his savings and destroyed his career while allowing corrupt executives to walk away with millions.

It's clear from the 3,000-word manifesto posted on a Web site registered in his name that the bitter feud with the Internal Revenue Service was his passion -- one so deeply held it apparently drove him to commit suicide Thursday by slamming his single-engine Piper PA-28 into an Austin office building that houses the IRS.

"Nothing changes unless there is a body count," Stack wrote.

It was a passion some of Stack's friends say they never saw.

They knew Stack as a fellow country rocker and band mate who recorded with them in Austin's vibrant music scene. They recalled a quiet father who visited Norway every year to visit a daughter and grandchildren. They never heard Stack talk about politics, about taxes, about the government -- the sources of pain Stack claims drove him to his death.

"I read the letter that he wrote. It sounded like his voice but the things he said I had never heard him say," said Pam Parker, an Austin attorney whose husband was one of Stack's band mates.

Part-autobiographical, Stack's anti-government screed references attending college in Harrisburg, Pa., a divorce and some failed business ventures in California. Mostly, though, Stack outlines his frustration with the government and the IRS. The 53-year-old contract software engineer, whose full name was A. Joseph Stack III, wrote that he spent months on the six-page diatribe in hopes it would be therapeutic.

Instead, "there isn't enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken," Stack wrote. He lamented that he couldn't "gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head."

The letter is dated Thursday, with the years he lived: 1956-2010.

"I think that Joe must have been hurting really bad to take these kinds of steps to make the pain stop," said the Rev. Patti Herndon, who married Stack and his wife, Sheryl, in July 2007.

In his note, Stack refers 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 the state's Franchise Tax Board. Stack listed himself as chief executive officer of both.

In 1985, he incorporated Prowess Engineering Inc. in Corona, Calif. In 1994, he failed to file a state tax return and was suspended in 2000 by the tax board. He started Software Systems Service Corp. in Lincoln, Calif., in 1995. That entity was suspended in 2004. Denise Azimi, spokeswoman for the Franchise Tax Board, said Stack did not pay state taxes in 1996 and 2002 -- a bill totaling $1,153.

Those disputes apparently were never discussed among friends.

"I don't know what to base his madness on," said Michael Cerza, who played drums, piano and trumpet with Stack in The Billy Eli Band. "It must have been lurking beneath the surface."

Stack attended Harrisburg Area Community College from 1975-77 but did not graduate, said school spokesman Patrick M. Early. Before that, he graduated from Milton Hershey School in nearby Hershey. The Hershey school was founded and endowed by the candy magnate more than 90 years ago as a home and school for orphaned boys.

"He talked about that, and my husband and I talked about how well-adjusted he was," Parker said.

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

"He was a good man. Frustrated with the IRS, yes, but a good man," Stack's former wife, Ginger Stack, told the Los Angeles Times from her home in Hemet, Calif. "I'm in shock right now. He had good values. He really did."

Calls by The Associated Press to a telephone number listed for Ginger Stack in Hemet resulted in apparent hang-ups Thursday.

According to Joe Stack's letter, he moved to Austin sometime after 2001. Friends introduced the then-divorced bass guitar and piano player to Sheryl, a pianist who gives lessons. Cerza said he recently received a group e-mail in which Stack invited friends to one of his wife's piano recitals.

"Joe was very straight -- didn't drink or smoke. He was intelligent, concerned about all the stuff normal people are concerned about," Cerza said. "He did not strike me as having any angular edges at all."

Parker said she last saw Stack at one of his wife's recitals, and that the couple occasionally attended classical jazz house concerts the couple hosted in their home, a 2,500 square foot house on a street lined with oak trees in a middle-class Austin neighborhood that he bought in 2007. The home was set ablaze Thursday morning, burning to the ground as Sheryl and the couple's daughter watched from the street.

"They're remarkably calm but they're clearly distraught. ... They're in need of some mental health assistance and we're providing that," said Marty McKellips, a Red Cross spokeswoman.

In his letter, Stack writes of trouble finding work in Austin and acknowledges failing to file a tax return one year because he didn't make any money. Stack's tipping point appears to be a recent audit, and the discovery of nearly $13,000 in unreported income.

"I know I'm hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand," Stack wrote. "But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure (sic) nothing will change."

[Associated Press; By JEFF CARLTON and JAY ROOT]

Carlton and Associated Press writers Danny Robbins and Linda Stewart Ball reported from Dallas. AP reporter Mark Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pa.

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