'Eight Men Out' Actor Jack Merrill Says John Wayne Gacy Sexually Assaulted Him

Actor Jack Merrill is sharing a traumatic experience from 1978 when he was kidnapped by serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Miraculously, Merrill survived the ordeal and just a few months later, on December 21, 1978, Gacy—a contractor who also entertained as Pogo the Clown—was arrested and ultimately charged with the murders of 33 young men. He was executed by lethal injection in 1994.

For years, the "Eight Men Out" attempted to move on from the attack, confiding only in his closest friends about the harrowing night when Gacy forced a loaded gun into his mouth during a brutal episode of rape and torture at his ranch house on the outskirts of Chicago.

Jack Merrill is now ready to share his account of survival and has written a one-man show about his extraordinary life, "The Save," at the Electric Lodge theater in Los Angeles.

Growing up with a mother who had a "narcissistic personality" and in "a very unhappy place," Jack Merrill decided to move out of the house at 17 "after I got into a fistfight with my father on Christmas Eve." He ended up in his own studio apartment in downtown Chicago.

"By 19, I was working in clubs," he recalled, per People, adding:

"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.'"

Merrill said he "had never gotten into anyone’s car before," but he "had a sense that if he thought I was different from other people he’d picked up, then I should stick with it."

The man, who he later found out was John Wayne Gacy, pulled over and asked if Merrill had ever done “poppers”—amyl nitrite-- and pulled out a brown bottle, splashed some liquid on a rag, and jammed it into his face. "I passed out, and when I woke up, I was in handcuffs," he recalled. "The next thing I knew, we were outside his house."

That's the moment he realized this man was dangerous and he was in some serious trouble.

"I was a puny 19-year-old. I knew I couldn’t anger him," he said. "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."

And that's exactly what the "Kings" actor did. Gacy convinced the man that he trusted him, so the handcuffs were removed, and the two shared a beer. But the handcuffs didn't stay off long.

"He put the handcuffs back on and dragged me down the hall," Merrill said. "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. I did at one point and started to lose air."

Merrill said John Wayne Gacy "stuck a gun in my mouth" and then "he raped me in the bedroom."

"I knew if I fought him, I didn’t have much of a chance," he added. "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.'"

Merrill was dropped off approximately where he was picked up. "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," he added.

However, he opted not to call the police. "I didn’t know he was a killer at the time," he recounted. "I went to the Snowflake Diner and had scrambled eggs and a chocolate milkshake. 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."

A few months later, Merrill saw the headline “Bodies Found at Suburban Site" in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"The story had a map, and there was the Cumberland exit on the Kennedy Expressway. I called the paper and said, 'That guy raped me.'

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."

Merrill ultimately learned that he went to prison.

While he has tried to move on from the harrowing incident, he admits he still faces it because "our culture is obsessed with John Wayne Gacy."

"Years ago I was at the Haunted Hayride in Griffith Park in L.A. We turn a corner, and there’s a banner that says, 'Macy’s Day Parade' But the 'M' was crossed out and replaced with a red 'G,' and there’s clowns running around with axes and knives," he recalled seeing. "It’s that fright factor. People love it, but I don’t find violence fun. I won’t go to those movies."

"The idea of watching someone being tied up . . . I can’t. When I get scared, I never cry—my emotions get locked," he added. "But when good things happen in movies, when someone gets what they want, the waterworks start."

Merrill says he has been to group therapy, and while the purpose was not for his encounter with Gacy, he has still found ways to forgive. "There was a woman who had been raped, beaten and left for dead," Merrill recalled. "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."

"I’m proud of the journey. I was able to learn from the bad and use it for the good," he later admitted. "You know, I’m lucky. I’ve always been lucky."

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “TRUST” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.