Jack Merrill never told anyone he was assaulted by the infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy in 1978, for fear of being “remembered” only for that one event in his life—and as forever linked to the Gacy story.
Months before Gacy was arrested and ultimately convicted of murdering 33 young men in 1978, Merrill, a character actor known for his parts on shows like Law & Order and Grey’s Anatomy, said he encountered Gacy when he was 19 years old, walking home from a swim at the YMCA, via an essay in People.
“A guy pulled over and said, ‘Do you want to go for a ride?’” Merrill writes. After a few minutes, “He pulled out this brown bottle, splashed some liquid on a rag and jammed it into my face,” he continues. “I passed out, and when I woke up, I was in handcuffs.”
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Gacy then took him to his house, where Merrill writes that 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.”
Merrill, now 65, goes on to describe the rape, during which he writes he survived by not fighting back. “He raped me in the bedroom,” Merrill writes. “I knew if I fought him, I didn’t have much of a chance. I never freaked out or yelled.”
Ultimately Gacy “tired” and offered to take Merrill home before ultimately offering the then-teen his phone number before driving off. “When I got home, I flushed the number down the toilet, then took a shower,” he writes, but “I didn’t call the police—I didn’t know he was a killer at the time.”
Merrill writes that he tried to put the ordeal behind him, until a few months later when he saw a Chicago Sun-Times story reporting that bodies had been found near the spot where Gacy had picked him up. He called the newspaper to report that he believed his rape was connected to the murders, but since his father was a reporter at the paper, he didn’t give his name.
“I hung up the phone. I thought if the police ever needed my help, I’d come forward.” He didn’t have to, ultimately, as “They found all these bodies under that house, and years later he was convicted.” Gacy was sentenced and died of lethal injection for his crimes in 1994.
Merrill almost went public with his story years ago, when he met with a Hollywood executive about the idea of turning his experience into a movie. Merrill told People the exec asked, “That’s how you want to be remembered?” which gave him pause. “I thought, ‘No, I guess not. That would be tying myself to him.’”
The actor has since had a change of heart, and decided to tell his story with a one-man-show called The Save at the Electric Lodge in Los Angeles. The play is “cathartic” for him, he told the magazine, “I’m proud of my journey.”
