Jack Merrill, an actor with credits including “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Eight Men Out,” and “Law & Order,” is reflecting on his harrowing encounter with notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
The future actor was just 19 years old when he was approached in 1978 by Gacy, a murderous man who killed at least 33 boys and, on occasion, dressed up as a clown.
Merrill was walking home at the time, and Gacy offered him a ride, per a first-hand account he wrote for People. Not knowing any better, he accepted, only to be drugged and raped by one of the most notorious serial killers ever known.
“He pulled over near the ramp of the Kennedy Expressway and asked if I’d ever done ‘poppers’—amyl nitrite,” he wrote. “He pulled out this brown bottle, splashed some liquid on a rag and jammed it into my face. I passed out, and when I woke up, I was in handcuffs.”
Gacy eventually removed his cuffs and offered a beer to Merrill, but he again restrained him shortly thereafter.
“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 wrote. “I did at one point and started to lose air.”
Then, Gacy stuck a gun in his mouth and raped him, Merrill recalled.
“I knew if I fought him, I didn’t have much of a chance,” he recalled.
“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,” Merrill wrote. “We’d been there for hours. Finally, I could tell he was tiring.
“All of a sudden he said, ‘I’ll take you home.’”
By then, it was around 5 in the morning. Merrill said Gacy dropped him off not far from where their paths first crossed and gave him his phone number before driving off.
“When I got home, I flushed the number down the toilet, then took a shower,” Merrill said.
A few months later, an article appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times with a headline reading, “Bodies Found at Suburban Site.” Merrill said he quickly realized he knew the suspect — it was Gacy.
“I made a pact with myself that I was going to get past this,” he said. “I wasn’t going to leave my happiness in that house.”
Part of his recovery was thanks to acting. Merrill has appeared in a number of TV series including “Numb3rs” and “Hannah Montana.”
He also said he consciously worked to forgive Gacy for what he did.
“I read about Oprah doing a show about forgiveness,” the actor said. “There was a woman who had been raped, beaten and left for dead. She said if she didn’t forgive her attacker, she couldn’t get on with her life. I knew I had to do that—to somehow forgive Gacy.”
Merrill additionally credited his partner, writing, “I also found love.”
“There’s a lot of people who have had bad things happen to them,” he said. “Many people who have been raped don’t talk about it. I understand that.”
Merrill concluded: “I’m proud of the journey. I was able to learn from the bad and use it for the good. You know, I’m lucky. I’ve always been lucky.”
