The Full Story Behind 'Law & Order' Star Jack Merrill's Amazing Escape From the Clutches of Serial Killer Clown John Wayne Gacy After He Was Kidnapped and Sexually Violated by Maniac
Nov. 18 2024, Published 11:36 a.m. ET
Law & Order actor Jack Merrill admitted he's lucky to be alive because as a teen, he was kidnapped and sexually violated by Killer Clown John Wayne Gacy, who murdered at least 33 young men and boys, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Gacy, who dressed as a clown and performed for children, preyed on Merrill in 1978 when he spotted the "puny 19-year-old walking home from a swim at a Chicago YMCA, pulled his car up and asked: "Do you want to go for a ride?"
Gacy, then 36, drove by at ramp of the Kennedy Expressway, parked, told the teen to lock the door and splashed liquid on a rag and forced it over Merrill's face.
When Merrill, who had a boyfriend and lived in an apartment, came to, he was handcuffed behind Gacy's Norwood Park Township home.
"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 said. "I knew I couldn't anger him. I just had to defuse the situation and act like everything was okay."
Gacy uncuffed him and took him into the house, where they drank beer and smoked pot. Then he was handcuffed again and dragged to a room where Gacy put a device on his neck that would choke him if he struggled.
Sticking a gun into Merrill's mouth, the fiend raped the terrified teen.
"I knew if I fought him, I didn't have much of a chance. I never freaked out or yelled", Merrill recalled.
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Incredibly, Merrill said he felt sorry for Gacy, thinking "he didn't necessarily want to be doing what he was doing, but he couldn't stop". Fearing the worst, Merrill was stunned when "all of a sudden the monster said, ‘I'll take you home’.”
Gacy dropped the youth off near where he'd picked him up, telling him: "Maybe we'll get together again sometime", and handed the teen a paper with his phone number.
Merrill said he flushed the paper down the toilet. He didn't call cops because "I didn't know he was a killer at the time".
Soon after the incident, cops found 26 bodies of boys and young men in a crawl space under the Killer Clown's home.
Gacy was convicted of raping, torturing and murdering at least 33 males between the ages of 14 and 21, and was executed by lethal injection in 1994.
The 65-year-old actor, who played court clerk Milton Corboy on Law & Order, shivered recalling Gacy telling him: "You're smart. You're not like those other kids."
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