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In 1978, Jack Merrill unwillingly entered serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s house. Unlike dozens of Gacy’s different victims, he left the home alive.
Merrill, who was 19 when the abduction and rape occurred, has since turn into an actor, showing in small roles on a number of tv collection, together with “Law & Order” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Now he is starring in his personal story, having written a one-man present that he’ll carry out known as “The Save,” which particulars that horrific night time with Gacy.
JOHN WAYNE GACY’S LAWYER ‘WANTED TO LOOK EVIL IN THE EYE,’ BELIEVES AT LEAST 20 MORE VICTIMS
Actor Jack Merrill has appeared in small roles on a number of tv collection, together with “Law & Order,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Games People Play” and “Steve the Intern.” (Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
“When I was 19 years old, I was abducted and raped by a mass murderer. One who’s etched into the American consciousness. John Wayne Gacy,” he informed People journal. “Yeah, that guy from Chicago who dressed as a clown and murdered 33 boys and young men under his house and garage and who authorities believe killed even more.”
The son of a revered sports activities author for the Chicago Sun-Times, Merrill says he grew up in a tumultuous family, the youngest of 5 kids.
John Wayne Gacy posing for traditional mugshots on the Des Plaines Police Department. (Des Plaines Police Department/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service by way of Getty Images)
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“By 19, I was working in clubs,” he defined. “I wanted to be an actor but didn’t know how to go about that. I would go swimming at the YMCA, and one night, after a swim, I was walking home. A guy pulled over and said, ‘Do you want to go for 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. 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.’”
“I had never gotten into anyone’s car before, but I had a sense that if he thought I was different from other people he’d picked up, then I should stick with it. He pulled over near the ramp of the Kennedy Expressway and asked if I’d ever done “poppers”—amyl nitrite. 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.”
Backyard constructions and the entrance and again garden of John Wayne Gacy’s house are fully destroyed because of the investigation. (Walter Kale/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service by way of Getty Images)
Shortly after, he arrived at Gacy’s now notorious house. “He told me to be quiet,” Merrill recounted. “A light from the back of the house hit him in the eyes and suddenly I realized how dangerous he was.”
“I knew he was crazy, and I knew I couldn’t fight him. And I knew that I couldn’t anger him. And I just had to diffuse the situation, diffuse the situation. Act like everything was okay all the time. Because I grew up doing that. I did it my whole life.”
Jack Merrill remembers being drugged in John Wayne Gacy’s automotive. (Greg Doherty/Getty Images)
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Merrill remembers pondering that if he had been to combat Macy, he would not survive. “I didn’t not, not fight him . . . I was 19 years old and I was a scrawny little kid . . . I had learned skills that I was able to put into use so that I didn’t lose.”
Now 65, he remembers the home being “dark” and that he “sensed it was a trap.”
“He asked if I trusted him, and I said I did, so he took off the handcuffs. There was a bar in the middle of the house. We had beer, and he had this strong pot, and then he put the handcuffs back on and dragged me 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 defined.
“I knew he was crazy and I knew I couldn’t fight him.”
Jack Merrill believes folks would not care if this similar assault had occurred to him however had not been dedicated by John Wayne Gacy. (J. Vespa/WireImage/Getty Images)
“I did at one point and started to lose air. 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. We’d been there for hours. Finally, I could tell he was tiring. All of a sudden he said, ‘I’ll take you home.’”
“If this had happened to me and it wasn’t [Gacy], nobody would care. Which is interesting for me to think about. Because there’s a lot of other people that bad things happen to,” he acknowledged. “They’re not interested in me. They’re interested in [Gacy]. And I know that, and that’s fine, but that’s a weird thing about our society.”
John Wayne Gacy in mugshots taken in 1978. (Bureau of Prisons/Getty Images)
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Merrill says Gacy dropped him off near the place they’d first met round 5 A.M. “He gave me his phone number and said, ‘Maybe we’ll get together again sometime.’ 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.”
Merrill says he initially tried to inform this story years in the past, however was discouraged by a film government. Merrill remembers that individual asking him, “That’s how you want to be remembered?”
“If this had happened to me and it wasn’t [Gacy], nobody would care.”
That stalled the method of telling his story, however it did not kill it.
“One of my big messages with this [one-man]show is that I’m not a victim. Something happened to me. It was one night, and I made a pact with myself at that time that he controlled me for one night, but he would not control my life,” Merrill mentioned. “He was not going to be the identifying factor in my life. . . . This trauma was not going to guide my life.”
If you or somebody you understand has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org
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