Actor Jack Merrill, who has appeared in Grey’s Anatomy and Law & Order, has spoken out about being abducted and raped by serial killerJohn Wayne Gacy 46 years ago.
Gacy, a contractor who also performed as Pogo the Clown, was convicted of raping, torturing and murdering at least 33 young men and boys in Chicago, Illinois in the 1970s. He was executed by lethal injection in 1994.
Writing in People, Merrill – now 65 – says the horrific incident happened one night when he finished swimming at his YMCA. He was walking home in Evanston, Illinois when a man pulled over and said: “Do you want to go for a ride?” It was Gacy.
The then-19-year-old said yes. He thought they’d go around the block a few times but Gacy began driving quickly and turned into a dangerous neighborhood.
Gacy told him: “Lock your door. It’s dangerous.” The actor had never gotten into a stranger’s car before. The killer pulled over near a highway entrance ramp and asked Merrill if he’d ever done “poppers” or amyl nitrate. Gacy then pulled out a rag, splashed a liquid on it and shoved it into the young man’s face, making him unconscious.
When Merrill woke up, he was in handcuffs. He saw the highway exit and later stood outside Gacy’s home.
Gacy told him to be quiet. Merrill then realized how dangerous the man was.
“I knew I couldn’t anger him,” Merrill wrote. “I just had to diffuse the situation and act like everything was okay.”
Merrill thought the dark home was a trap.
Gacy asked if the actor trusted him, he wrote. He responded that he did. Gacy then took off his handcuffs. The two then had a beer before Merrill was dragged down the hall.
“He put this homemade contraption around my neck. It had ropes and pulleys, and it went around my back and through my handcuffed hands in a way that if I struggled, I would choke,” he wrote.
“He stuck a gun in my mouth. Then he raped me in the bedroom. I knew if I fought him, I didn’t have much of a chance. I never freaked out or yelled. I also felt sorry for him in a way, like he didn’t necessarily want to be doing what he was doing, but he couldn’t stop.”
The men had been in the home for hours. Eventually, Gacy got tired and said he’d take Merrill home.
Merrill got out of the car not far from where Gacy had picked him up hours earlier.
“He gave me his phone number and said, ‘Maybe we’ll get together again sometime,’” Merrill continued.
“When I got home, I flushed the number down the toilet, then took a shower. I didn’t call the police—I didn’t know he was a killer at the time.”
It wasn’t until several months later when Gacy was arrested in December 1978 that Merrill understood the potential gravity of what he had narrowly escaped.
He read a headline in the Chicago Sun-Times, reading: “Bodies Found at Suburban Site.” He noticed the same freeway exit on a map the newspaper printed. He called the paper and told a staff member: “That guy raped me.”
The employee responded: “What did you say your name was?” Merrill hung up.
The actor said he’s forgiven Gacy. Until now, he’s only told his close friends about what happened. Merrill has written a one-man show about his life called The Save. It’s running at the Electric Lodge in Los Angeles from October 24 to November 3.
He told the magazine performing the show is “cathartic” and he is “proud of my journey.”
