Joseph Stack

He then describes his life as an engineer, including his meeting with a poor widow who never got the pension benefits she was promised, the effect of Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on independent contractor engineers, the September 11 attacks, airline bailouts that benefited only the airlines but not the suffering engineers, and how a CPA he hired seemed to side with the government to take extra tax money from him.

The note also mentions Stack's having issues with taxes, debt, and the IRS and his having a long-running feud with the organization.

While the IRS also has a larger regional office in Austin, the field office located in Echelon I performed tax audits, seizures, investigations and collections.

The note ended with:

Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Revenue Officer Group Manager for the IRS, was killed in the incident along with Joseph Stack.

Thirteen people were reported as injured, two of them critically.

Debris from the crash reportedly shattered the windshield of a car being driven on the southbound access road of Highway 183 in front of the building.

Andrew Joseph Stack III (August 31, 1956 – February 18, 2010) lived in the Scofield Farms neighborhood in North Austin, and worked as an embedded software consultant.

He grew up in Pennsylvania and had two brothers and two sisters.

Stack was orphaned at age four, and spent some time at a Catholic orphanage.

He graduated from the Milton Hershey School in 1974 and studied engineering at Harrisburg Area Community College from 1975 to 1977, but did not graduate.

His first marriage, to Ginger Stack, which ended in divorce, produced a daughter, Samantha Bell.

In 1985, Stack, along with his first wife, incorporated Prowess Engineering.

In 1994, he failed to file a state tax return.

Stack obtained a pilot's certificate in 1994 and owned a Velocity Elite XL-RG plane, in addition to the Piper Dakota (aircraft registration N2889D) he flew into the Echelon building.

He had been using the Georgetown Municipal Airport for four and a half years and paid $236.25 a month to rent a hangar.

There has been speculation that Stack replaced seats on his aircraft with extra drums of fuel prior to the collision.

Stack's accountant confirmed that at the time of the incident, he was being audited by the Internal Revenue Service for failure to report income.

About an hour before the crash, Stack allegedly set fire to his $230,000 house located on Dapplegrey Lane in North Austin; the house was mostly destroyed in the fire.

He then drove to a hangar he rented at Georgetown Municipal Airport, approximately 20 miles to the north.

He boarded his single-engine Piper Dakota airplane and took off around 9:45 a.m. Central Standard Time.

He indicated to the control tower his flight would be "going southbound, sir."

After taking off, his last broadcast words were "thanks for your help, have a great day."

About ten minutes later, his plane descended and collided at full speed with Echelon I, a building containing offices for 190 IRS employees, resulting in a large fireball and explosion.

The building is located near the intersection of Research Boulevard (U.S. Route 183) and Mopac Expressway (Loop 1).

On the morning of the crash, Stack posted a suicide note on his website, embeddedart.com.

The HTML source code of the web page shows the letter was composed using Microsoft Word starting two days prior, February 16, at 19:24Z (1:24 p.m. CST).

The document also shows that it was saved 27 times with the last being February 18 at 06:42Z (12:42 a.m. CST).

In the note, he begins by expressing displeasure with the government, the bailout of financial institutions, politicians, the conglomerate companies of General Motors, Enron and Arthur Andersen, unions, drug and health care insurance companies, and the Catholic Church.

In 1995, Stack started Software Systems Service Corp, which was suspended in 2004 for non-payment of state taxes.

In 1998, the Stacks divorced, and a year later his wife filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing Federal tax liabilities totaling nearly $126,000.

In 2007, Stack married Sheryl Housh, who had a daughter from a previous marriage.

The 2010 Austin suicide attack occurred on February 18, 2010, when Andrew Joseph Stack III deliberately crashed his single-engine Piper Dakota light aircraft into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas, United States, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) manager Vernon Hunter.

Thirteen others were injured, two severely.

The four-story office building housed an IRS field office occupying the top three floors, along with a couple of private businesses on the first floor.

Prior to the crash, Stack had posted a suicide note to his website, expressing his disillusionment with corporations and government agencies such as the IRS.

Stack is also suspected of having set fire that morning to his two-story North Austin house, which was mostly destroyed.

In the aftermath, there was increased debate over the policies of the IRS, and different forms of protest.

In response to the attack, the IRS spent more than $38.6 million, with $6.4 million spent to recover and resume work at the building, and over $32 million spent to increase security at other IRS sites in the U.S. However, the spending on security changes was questioned as being ineffective, as none of it would actually prevent airplanes from crashing into the buildings.

The building was repaired by December 2011.