reporter: and an angry manifesto left behind. here in austin, texas. 53-year-old joe stack made a missile of his small plane. slamming it into an irs office. a final expression of a simmering rage. on the surface, joe stack seemed like a good guy, sound and perfectly sane. so what led this regular joe to become what some would call a domestic terrorist? what drove him to kill on february 18? he was like the poster boy for chill. reporter: rick furly was a band mate of joe stack s. joe played base and was the kind of guy you could count on. superprofessional. reporter: billy eli was the front man who brought stack into the band. he says the joe stack who flew his plane into a building was not the same joe stack he knew. some people call him a domestic terrorist. yeah, some people do. and some people call him all kinds of things, man. i called him a friend of mine and my bass player. i mean i wasn t aware of any political agenda that he ever had. reporter: austin
he was really good the keeping that to himself. in my case and you know, i can only speak for what i saw, just very demeanor that it takes to write something like that, i never saw that. and you know, i m just this has been such a shock because it just it was totally out of character from joe stack that i played in a band with for three years. when billy says rick, it was totally out of character. what was joe s character when you were playing in the band together? how did he comport himself. extremely professional. billy will agree, he knew what to play, knew the part. didn t let us done. he was just a good guy to have in the band and we appreciated his input and helped produce
years ago but you had an opportunity in recent months to catch up with him. what was he like at that time? what is his demeanor? can you sort of try to uncover the man that joe stack was a little for us here? well, the last time i spoke with joe was about early december and he was the same joe stack that he had been three years that he played in my band. you know, he didn t seem distraught or anything like that. just, you know, regular easy going joe. rick, we ve got pictures of the band playing together that we want to put up. when billy says he was regular joe, who is regular joe? well, i think he means that in a complement tri way. i never saw him in a bad mood or speaking negatively about anyone or anything. this has been a big surprise. i wish i could see the pictures.
billy, at the time that you had met him, he was, if this is in fact his writing, there s no reason to believe it s not, that he was in the middle of a very tormented period in his life. he said this note, he was trying to write it as a form of therapy. there isn t enough therapy in the world that can fix what s really broken. also said he couldn t gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. have you read any of this note? what kind of insight does it give us as to what might have been happening in his life? i haven t actually read any of the manifesto, i ve heard quotes of some of the things he said. and again, the only thing i can say about that was he hid that really well. obviously he was some serious distress and in real despair.
just some pictures of the band standing together it looks like in and there s a picture of joe wearing the cowboy hat we have seen him wear. rick, billy said he got no sense from joe the last time he saw him in december that anything was wrong. did you have get that sense from him? never. it s been longer since i ve seen joe but this is nothing we plan on this i didn t see it and i m not real sure you know what to think about all of this. he was hiding or had this buried deep inside of him somehow and we never knew it. if it was going on at the same time where we were working together, it s even more of a surprise. it would seem apparent from this six-page note left on the internet he had been troubled for some time.