A veteran actor who has appeared in “Law & Order” and “Grey’s Anatomy” revealed Wednesday that he was abducted, raped, and held at gunpoint by notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy more than 45 years ago.
Jack Merrill described himself as a “puny 19-year-old” in 1978 when “the Killer Clown” pulled his car up to the teen as he walked home from a swim at a YMCA in Chicago.
“Do you want to go for a ride?” Merrill recalled being asked in an essay published by People.
Merrill, who had been living alone in a studio apartment since he was 17, jumped into the stranger’s car before being told, “You’re smart. You’re not like those other kids.”
Merrill believed the ride would be around the block, but Gacy quickly drove to a different neighborhood, where he told him to lock the door, before pulling over near the ramp of the Kennedy Expressway, northwest of downtown Chicago.
Gacy, then 36, asked Merrill if he’d ever done “poppers,” alkyl nitrite, as he took out a brown bottle, splashing liquid onto a rag and shoving it into the teen’s face.
Merrill, who had a boyfriend at the time, said he passed out, only to wake up and find himself handcuffed outside Gacy’s Northwood Park Township home, 4 miles east of Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
“He told me to be quiet. A light from the back of the house hit him in the eyes and suddenly I realized how dangerous he was,” Merrill wrote. “I knew I couldn’t anger him. I just had to defuse the situation and act like everything was okay.”
Merrill said this method of de-escalation was the same one he and his sisters used to ward off the wrath of their parents.
“That’s the way I had survived as a kid — we learned to lie low during my parents’ rages,” Merrill recalled.
Merrill said his mom had a narcissistic personality, with “nothing existing outside of how life affected her.”
His father was Jerome Holtzman, the legendary MLB historian and National Baseball Hall of Famer, who at the time was the baseball writer for the Chicago Sun-Times.
Once inside the dark house, Merrill said, he obliged when he was asked if he trusted Gacy, who then undid the teen’s handcuffs before the two had beer and strong pot.
Gacy re-handcuffed his victim and dragged him down a hall before fitting a homemade contraption around Merrill’s neck.
The device was fitted with ropes and pulleys and went around his back and through the handcuffs, so if Merrill struggled, he would be choked.
Gacy shoved a gun into Merrill’s mouth before proceeding to rape his victim.
“I knew if I fought him, I didn’t have much of a chance. I never freaked out or yelled,” Merrill said.
Merrill admitted to feeling sorry for his abuser “in a way.” “Like he didn’t necessarily want to be doing what he was doing, but he couldn’t stop.”
As Gacy seemed to get tired, the killer surprised the teen.
“All of a sudden he said, ‘I’ll take you home.’”
Merrill was dropped off around 5 a.m., near where he had been picked up.
“Maybe we’ll get together again sometime,” Gacy allegedly said as he handed over a paper with his phone number.
Merrill quickly flushed the paper down the toilet when he returned home. He opted for a shower and went to a diner for eggs and a milkshake, and didn’t notify the police.
“I didn’t call the police — I didn’t know he was a killer at the time,” he said. “I made a pact with myself that I was going to get past this. I wasn’t going to leave my happiness in that house.”
When news broke about Gacy’s arrest and bodies being found inside his home, Merrill called the Chicago Sun-Times.
““That guy raped me.’ The man who answered said, ‘What did you say your name was?’”
Merrill didn’t leave his name because his father still worked there.
“I thought if the police ever needed my help, I’d come forward,” the actor said.
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Gacy was convicted of raping, torturing and murdering at least 33 males between the ages of 14 and 21.
Twenty-six bodies were pulled from a crawl space under Gacy’s home in December 1978.
Five of the victims remain unidentified, after officials ID’d Francis Wayne Alexander, of North Carolina, through dental records in October 2021.
Gacy was arrested in December 1978, tried, convicted and sentenced to death.
Gacy was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Facility on May 10, 1994.
Merrill moved to New York, where he took up acting, which became therapeutic for him.
“You’re forced to express yourself, and there is some honesty that goes with that. Recognition and acceptance,” he added.
Merrill called himself lucky, surviving his traumatic brush with death, and ending up with a husband of 23 years and their two pets.
“There’s a lot of people who have had bad things happen to them. Many people who have been raped don’t talk about it. I understand that.”
The actor, who is starring in his own one-man show, “The Save,” in Los Angeles, seldom divulged this story.
“Until now I’ve only told close friends. But doing my new show, I walk through it every night. I’m proud of the journey.”
