Shack’s FBI career included: MLK murderer, notorious hijacker, Vietnam War protests
By LYNETTE HAALAND, Four Points News, Northwest Austin News
Shack and Joy Nail have been Austinites since the early 1970s when Shack went to work for the Texas governor.
It is more than the hills and the weather that keep them content in their corner of Northwest Austin — it’s taking walks, reading books, volunteering at church, going to games, spending time with family.
“We first moved to NW Hills because of friends, quality of neighborhood, location, convenient to shopping and restaurants,” Shack said.
Through the years this community has come to mean so much more – not only because of the people the Nails surround themselves with but also because these two take life by the horns.
Shack met Joy at a Baylor University business‑fraternity party in 1963.
“He was actually my first date my freshman year,” Joy said. “I told my roommate I thought he was cute. Back then, that’s all it took.”
Shack grew up in Haskell and then moved to Houston when he was in 5th grade when his dad, who was a doctor, decided to specialize in ear, nose and throat care.
Joy’s dad, who was born in 1903, became a long-time banker in Tulsa after graduating from the University of Oklahoma.
In 1966, Joy earned a business degree and Shack also graduated.
December 18 that year, the young Baylor couple married at the Tulsa University chapel. They will celebrate their 60th anniversary this year.
Shack graduated from law school in 1968.
“That was kind of at the height of the Vietnamese War,” Shack said. He had applied for several jobs in the military. “I was gonna be drafted imminently. So I just had the decision I was gonna take whichever came first, and it happened to be the FBI.”
He got a telegram regarding his acceptance as a Special Agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and one week later, he was in Washington, D.C. to train.
From 1968 to 1972, Shack worked for the FBI in San Diego, San Francisco, and Oakland.
The Nails relocated to Austin with their toddler daughter in 1972 after being offered a position in the governor’s office. Shack worked in the Office of Governor Preston Smith until 1973.
“Governor Smith lived in the governor’s mansion and he would walk by himself down to the Piccadilly Cafeteria and have breakfast every morning,” Shack said. “Now, of course, they all have security details.”
Shack then worked in leadership roles at Texas Center for the Judiciary from 1973 to 1980 and the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners from 1981 to 1988.
He remembers fun events for dedicated Baylor Bears when Mark White was governor in the mid 1980s. “When Baylor was playing Texas, he would invite all the Baylor alumni to come to the governor’s mansion for a reception.”
Shack got a job with the Employees Retirement System of Texas in 1989 and still works with ERS to this day. The ERS administers the pension plans for state employees and many higher education employees.
Shack noted that there have been a lot of good improvements around the capitol over the decades including the Capitol Extension and the Texas Capitol Complex project which includes the new Texas Capitol Mall.
Joy focused on raising their two children Nancy and Scott (born 1973) and worked part-time in the business office at Hyde Park Baptist Church for 27 years.
The Nails got a taste for the Northwest community when they would visit Shack’s mom after she moved to Charleston Place in 1989. Then in 1992, they moved to Greystone Drive, and now for nearly 19 years, they have lived on Stony Meadow Lane.
Over the years, Joy has enjoyed the hunt for antique English brown and white dishes, and many are on display in her kitchen and dining room. She is part of a dedicated group of neighbor ladies who meet to walk more than three miles every weekday at 6:45 a.m. The walks started during COVID when their gym was temporarily closed.
In addition to work, Shack likes to golf, hunt, target shoot, work out at Dell JCC, watch sports and read. He has been part of the Texana book club for more than 10 years and among other genres, he really enjoys books about Texas including “Lonesome Dove”, “The Gates of the Alamo”, “Lone Star Nation”, and “Big Wonderful Thing”.
The couple’s two married children have a total of four grandchildren and one great grandson, none of whom live in Austin. Every summer the Nails rent a place in Florida to gather the family.
Volunteering at church and going to ballgames take up other moments of their joy-filled lives.
“There is always a lot happening,” Shack said.
Shack’s Four Years at the FBI Filled with: MLK Murderer, Notorious Hijacker, Vietnam War Protests
By LYNETTE HAALAND, Four Points News, Northwest Austin News
Shack Nail was part of the FBI during an event-filled time including the James Earl Ray arrest, D.B. Cooper hijacker case, and civil rights activism from groups like the Black Panthers.
“I went in November of ’68, the previous April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated,” Shack said. “At that time, they were looking for and trying to apprehend James Earl Ray, that was the biggest manhunt in (FBI) history.”
Ray was apprehended in June in London’s Heathrow Airport.
“He was arrested by the British, and then the FBI went over and picked him up,” Shack said. “Two of my instructors at the FBI Academy were the ones that went over and brought him back.”
Shack’s first FBI office after the academy was in San Diego. He was there a couple of weeks when he and another agent went to the airport to interview a disgruntled traveler who was mad because his plane was late and “made the mistake of saying, ‘I ought to just put a bomb on this plane.’”
After nearly a year in San Diego, the Nails transferred to San Francisco where Shack worked with the FBI dealing with matters of national security.
“Of course, you had a lot going on in terms of protests because of the Vietnam War,” Shack said. “Students for a Democratic Society, Weather Underground, the Black Panther Party, all of those were protesting and anti-establishment.”
After a year, the next move took the Nails to Oakland.
The Black Panther Party was headquartered there with its cofounder Huey Newton.
The FBI dealt with matters of national security, maintaining records of events and groups as well as other duties. Shack would respond to bank robberies and fugitive apprehensions too.
The biggest case that Shack was directly involved in was that of hijacker Dan Cooper a.k.a. D.B. Cooper on November 24, 1971.
“D.B. Cooper got on a plane going from Portland, Oregon to Seattle. And at that time, we didn’t have all the protections… and he hijacked a plane,” Shack said. He told the flight crew he had a bomb and he demanded $200,000 and four parachutes. After the plane landed in Seattle, the passengers were released, and the plane refueled. Cooper’s demands were met and he directed the pilot to take off.
“Nobody knew where he was going. It was just him and the pilot on the plane,” Shack said. “I was in Oakland, and we were ordered to stay at the office, ’cause we didn’t know where he was going, whether he was going to land in Oakland, or Sacramento, or San Francisco, because (Cooper) was in charge of telling the pilot where he wanted to go.”
Cooper ended up jumping out of the plane over a heavily wooded area of Southwest Washington, according to reports. D.B. Cooper was wanted by the FBI for decades and the case was ultimately closed in 2016.
The pilot landed the plan in Sacramento, and Shack could go home after a very long and intense day on the job.
Photos by Summer Weinstein (682)-551-6226 srpp1976@gmail.com @summerpiercephotography