Joe Stack Pictures: First Photos of Alleged Austin IRS Plane Crasher
Photo: Joe Stack.
Stack, who is now presumed dead, was a software engineer filled with anger for the IRS, officials said. Nearly 200 IRS employees worked in the Echelon Building that he crashed into Thursday afternoon. At least one person who worked in the building has not been accounted for.
Photo: Echelon Building in Austin, Texas, Feb. 18, 2010.
Two days ago, the FBI believes Stack posted an angry suicide note on the Web in which he railed against the IRS, the Catholic Church, tax loopholes, bailouts and his own sorry state of affairs.
"Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well," the page said.
Stack wrote that he was angered by a "handful of thugs and plunderers (that) can commit unthinkable atrocities" including bailed out GM executives and the drug and insurance companies who "are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple."
Photo: Joe Stack.
He was pissed at politicians of all stripes and outraged at the IRS, which he believed unfairly gave tax loopholes to big corporations and the Catholic Church, but not regular Americans.
He said he tried to exploit the same loopholes but it backfired. That "little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0," he wrote.
He hoped that the "the American zombies wake up and revolt," and at times expressed that he was at a breaking point.
On Thursday, Pam Parker, the manager of the Billy Eli band in which Stack played, confirmed that the photos indeed show Stack.
Parker told CBS News she was shocked. "Clearly there was crazy in him but it must have been way in the back of his head," he said. "It wasn't who Joe was."
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PICTURES: Joe Stack
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