“I knew if I fought him, I didn’t have much of a chance.”

An actor named Jack Merrill, who has starred in the likes of Grey’s Anatomy, Law & Order and Steve the Intern, has revealed a terrifying truth about his life.

In a recent interview with People, he revealed that in the year of 1978, he was abducted by serial killer and rapist John Wayne Gacy.

Thankfully, Merrill had survived the awful attack that had kept him quiet for decades, months later in December 1978 Gacy was arrested and charged with the murder of 33 people.

Image credit: Netflix

Merrill, now aged 65, said he did not have a very easy childhood, claiming his mother was a “narcissist” which created a difficult family dynamic for himself and his sisters.

He eventually moved out of his family home at age 17 after a fistfight with his father, at age 19 he was working in clubs in Chicago and he would often go swimming at the YMCA.

When walking home alone he was pulled over and the man asked, “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 neighbourhood.”

“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 had said he never got into a stranger’s car before but this time was different.

“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,” he added.

“I saw the exit for Cumberland on the expressway, near the airport, and the next thing I knew, we were outside his house.”

He revealed as the light had hit Gacy’s eyes, after being told to be quiet, he realised how dangerous this man was.

“I was a puny 19-year-old,” he said.

“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,” he continued.

As Gacy questioned Merrill whether he trusted him, he replied, “I did”, in response, Gacy removed 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 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 tired. All of a sudden he said, ‘I’ll take you home.’”

Gacy then proceeded to give Merrill his phone number after dropping him off near where he picked him up, “Maybe we’ll get together again sometime,” Gacy said.

“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 revealed.

Merrill made a promise to himself that he was not going to allow such a traumatic and terrifying ordeal to destroy his life and he wasn’t going to “leave his happiness in that house.”

After reading a newspaper article headline, Merrill had realised who he had come across, “Chicago Sun-Times: Bodies Found at Suburban Site,” it read.

He revealed if the police ever needed more information on Gacy he would have come forward.

Merrill struggled to come to terms with what had happened to him but throughout the years it has got easier.

He managed to somewhat repair his relationship with both of his parents and is now in a loving relationship of 23 years and learned that “no one’s trauma is greater than anyone else’s.”