‘Law & Order’ Actor Jack Merrill Says He Was Abducted, Raped by John Wayne Gacy

Content warning: The following story features a detailed account of graphic sexual assault.

Law & Order actor Jack Merrill has opened up and shared that he once had a terrifying encounter with serial killer John Wayne Gacy. In a new personal essay for PEOPLE, Merrill recounts being abducted and raped by Gacy when he was a teenager.

In his op-ed, Merrill first discusses his difficult childhood growing up in Evanston, Illinois with his parents and four older sisters. He recalls his mother having “a narcissistic personality” which caused him and his siblings to be constantly “walking on eggshells” around her.” Merrill’s relationship with his father, a sportswriter, wasn’t much better, as he moved out of their family home at the age of 17 after getting into a “fistfight” with his dad on Christmas Eve.

Merrill headed to Chicago, where he landed a one-bedroom apartment and began working in clubs, though he knew that he wanted to be an actor someday. This is where his story with Gacy takes place in 1978 when Merritt was 19 years old, as he says he met the infamous murderer one night after going for a swim at the local YMCA.

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“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,” Merrill recalled, later adding, “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.”

Gacy eventually attacked Merrill and drugged him. When he came to, Merrill says he was handcuffed in the back of Gacy’s car. “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,” he writes. “That’s the way I had survived as a kid—we learned to lie low during my parents’ rages.”

Upon arriving at Gacy’s “dark” house, the serial killer handcuffed him again and bound him in a “homemade contraption” made of “ropes and pulleys” that would cause him to “lose air” if he struggled.

“He stuck a gun in my mouth. Then he raped me in the bedroom,” Merrill harrowingly recalled. “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.’”

“He dropped me off not far from where he’d picked me up,” Merrill continued. “It was around 5 in the morning. 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.”

Gacy, who was known as “the Killer Clown” due to his work as a party clown, was eventually arrested in 1978. At his trial in 1980, he was found guilty of 33 charges of murder and sentenced to death. Gacy’s execution was carried out on May 9, 1994.

Merrill would go on to achieve his dream of becoming an actor, appearing in many high-profile shows like Sex and the City, The O.C., Grey’s Anatomy, and the aforementioned Law & Order.

Click here to read Merrill’s full personal essay at PEOPLE.

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.