Jack Merrill, an actor in shows like Law & Order and Grey's Anatomy, is speaking out for the first time about being abducted and sexually assaulted by notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Nicknamed "The Killer Clown" because of his public performances as a clown, Gacy was arrested in December 1978 and sentenced to death for raping, torturing, and murdering at least 33 men between the ages of 14 and 21.
Twenty-six bodies were pulled from a crawl space in his home in the suburbs of Chicago. Gacy was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Facility on May 10, 1994.
In an essay for PEOPLE published Wednesday, Merrill, 65, recalled being a "puny 19-year-old" living by himself in a studio apartment in Chicago in 1978.
Months before the killer's arrest, Merrill said he was walking home from a swim at the YMCA when Gacy approached him in his car and asked if he wanted a ride.
"I thought I'd go around the block a few times, but he started driving quickly and turned into a really bad neighborhood," Merrill wrote. "He said, 'Lock your door. It's dangerous.' I said they kept that out of the papers because it was bad for business on nearby Rush Street, and he said, 'How do you know that, huh? You're smart. You're not like those other kids.'"
Gacy, 36 at the time, then asked the acting hopeful if he'd ever done poppers (alkyl nitrite) as he took out a brown bottle, splashing liquid onto a rag and shoving it into Merrill's face.
Merrill said he passed out and woke up in handcuffs at Gacy's house near the Chicago O'Hare International Airport.
"He told me to be quiet," the actor wrote. "A light from the back of the house hit him in the eyes and suddenly I realized how dangerous he was. I was a puny 19-year-old. I knew I couldn't anger him. I just had to diffuse the situation and act like everything was okay. That's the way I had survived as a kid—we learned to lie low during my parents' rages."
Merrill's mother was a narcissist. He and his sister "were walking on eggshells, always getting yelled at" by her. His father Jerome Holtzman, was a baseball writer for the Chicago Sun-Times and is in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Once inside the home, Gacy removed Merrill's handcuffs after he obliged when he was asked if he trusted Gacy. The pair had a beer and strong marijuana before Gacy re-handcuffed his victim and dragged him down the hallway with a homemade contraption around Merrill's 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.
The actor said Gacy then stuck a gun in his mouth and raped him in the bedroom.
"I knew if I fought him, I didn't have much of a chance. I never freaked out or yelled."
Merrill added, "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."
After several hours of being at Gacy's home, Merrill said he could tell the serial killer was getting tired.
"All of a sudden he said, 'I'll take you home,'" Merrill remembered.
Gacy dropped Merrill off near the same place he picked him up.
"He gave me his phone number and said, 'Maybe we'll get together again sometime,'" Merilll said.
The actor flushed Gacy's phone number down the toilet when he got back to his apartment. He took a shower and went to eat at a diner, but didn't call the police.
Months later, Merrill saw a story in the Chicago Sun-Times about bodies found at Gacy's home.
"I called the paper and said, 'That guy raped me,'" Merrill wrote.
"The man who answered said, 'What did you say your name was?' I didn't say my name. I was sensitive about my name because people knew my father. That was his paper. I hung up the phone."
"I thought if the police ever needed my help, I'd come forward. They found all these bodies under that house, and years later he was convicted. But like I said, if they had needed me, I would have come forward," he added.
Merrill is now happily married to his husband of 23 years. However, after years of living with his secret, he turned his story into his one-man show called in Los Angeles called The Save.
"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," Merrill wrote.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, help is available. Call the National Sexual Assault Hotline anytime at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or chat online here.
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