Where Are the Survivors of John Wayne Gacy Now? All About Their Lives Today, More Than 50 Years After Escaping the Serial Killer By Lynsey Eidell

Convicted of murdering 33 boys and young men in the 1970s, John Wayne Gacy is considered to be one of the country’s deadliest serial killers. But a handful of individuals managed to survive Gacy’s horrific attacks — with some even helping to land the sadistic killer behind bars.

Before his arrest in December 1978, Gacy was thought to be a model citizen in his Chicago-area community. He owned a successful contracting and remodeling business, volunteered as a clown at local children’s hospitals and participated in local politics, serving as the director for the Polish Constitution Day Parade and meeting First Lady Rosalynn Carter in May 1978.

But behind closed doors, Gacy lured dozens of unsuspecting young men and boys into his home, where he would proceed to sexually assault and strangle his victims, burying many of their bodies in a crawl space beneath his house, per the Associated Press. When he was finally arrested in December 1978, Gacy confessed to at least 30 murders and was ultimately convicted of 33 in March 1980. The so-called “Killer Clown” was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in May 1994.

Gacy’s story is now being told in the Peacock scripted drama Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy, which stars Severance‘s Michael Chernus and premiered in October 2025.

Here’s everything to know about the survivors of John Wayne Gacy.

There are at least seven reported survivors of John Wayne Gacy

Over the years, at least seven men have come forward as survivors of Gacy. They are Jeffrey Rignall, Donald Vorhees, Robert Donnelly, Jack Merrill, Tony Antonucci, Patrick Dati and David Bolton.

Bolton is thought to be one of Gacy’s first victims, as his attack allegedly took place in the summer of 1956 — when Bolton was 10 years old and Gacy was a teenager. They crossed paths at a lakeside resort in Elkhorn, Wis., where Bolton was on vacation with his mother and Gacy was working a summer job, according to a clip from A&E’s Invisible Monsters: Serial Killers in America.

Gacy befriended Bolton, inviting him to take a hike around the lake. But while hidden in a thicket, Gacy allegedly molested Bolton and threatened to drown him if he told anyone what happened, Bolton recalled to the Peoria Journal Star in May 2018.

Gacy reportedly assaulted Vorhees — the then-15-year-old son of a local politician — in August 1967 while living in Waterloo, Iowa. He allegedly lured the teenager to his home where he gave him alcohol, showed him pornography and then proceeded to sexually assault him, according to Buried Dreams: Inside the Mind of John Wayne Gacy by Tim Cahill.

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Dati alleges that he was raped by Gacy in January 1972 when he was just 9 years old. The attack occurred in the men’s room of a Chicago department store, per ABC7, where Gacy allegedly threatened him at knife-point to not tell anyone about the assault.

In 1975, Antonucci was a 16-year-old apprentice for Gacy’s construction company, PDM Contractors, in Des Plaines, Ill. During a job, Antonucci stepped on a nail, requiring Gacy to take him for a tetanus shot, he recalled on a 2023 episode of A&E’s Close Encounters With Evil.

Gacy later came to check on Antonucci at his apartment — where he was staying solo while his parents were away — and brought wine. Gacy then reportedly attempted to attack Antonucci by handcuffing him. But Antonucci, a high school wrestler, managed to escape the handcuffs, take down Gacy and handcuff him — after which Gacy left, he said.

Meanwhile, Donnelly was allegedly abducted at gunpoint by the serial killer in Chicago in December 1977, when he was 19 years old. Gacy brought Donnelly back to his apartment, where he proceeded to rape, torture and abuse him for hours, according to court documents. Though Gacy reportedly told Donnelly he was going to die, Gacy ultimately released him, dropping him off near the Chicago department store where he worked. Similarly, Gacy abducted, assaulted and tortured — and later set free — both Rignall, per the court documents, and Merrill, as he told PEOPLE in May 2024.

Authorities believe there could be more survivors out there.

“There were plenty of his victims that got away, thankfully,” Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told ABC7 in October 2011. “Some of those came forward back then and gave a lot of the details. Some of them didn’t know who this guy was.”

Three survivors reported their assaults to the police

In March 1968, Vorhees told his father about Gacy sexually assaulting him. His father immediately went to the police, and Gacy was ultimately arrested and charged with one count of sodomy, according to Buried Dreams. Though Gacy maintained his innocence, he failed two polygraph tests and reportedly paid a local teenager to beat up Vorhees and scare him out of testifying, per the book.

Gacy was ultimately convicted in November 1968 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, per the Chicago Tribune. However, he was released on parole in 1970.

Another survivor also went to the police to report his assault on Dec. 31, 1977, according to the Chicago Tribune. Gacy was reportedly questioned by authorities, but claimed the sexual acts — and their brutality — were consensual. The assistant district attorney decided not to pursue any criminal charges against Gacy.

“I was shocked,” the survivor told the newspaper in 1979. “They [the police] would only say there was insufficient evidence. Both the cops and an assistant state’s attorney said that he [Gacy] was a solid citizen.”

Then, in March 1978, Rignall went to Chicago police after surviving Gacy’s abduction and attack. However, he, too, was initially dismissed by police after he couldn’t identify his attacker, per Oxygen. Rignall then launched an investigation of his own, taking details from his assault — such as the make of Gacy’s car and the sound of airplanes landing — to stake out his attacker. When he eventually spotted Gacy and provided his identity to police, Gacy was charged with one count of battery — but was released on a minor bond, according to Oxygen.

Chicago police’s youth division unit had also been alerted to Gacy in 1975, when kids in the Chicago neighborhood where Gacy lived reported that a man named “John” would drive around in his car picking up young boys, per the Chicago Tribune. But after tailing Gacy for two weeks, police did not witness him doing anything illegal and were unable to build a case against him.

Four of John Wayne Gacy’s survivors testified at his 1980 trial

When Gacy finally faced trial for 33 murder charges in February 1980, Rignall, Vorhees, Donnelly and Antonucci all took the stand to testify about their encounters with the killer.

According to court documents, Rignall was called to the stand by the defense and asked to recount his experience with Gacy. Rignall testified to being chloroformed repeatedly by Gacy, causing him to go in and out of consciousness, as well as being brutally raped, sodomized and assaulted throughout the night. However, Rignall stated he did not believe Gacy was legally sane at the time he was attacked — due to “the beastly and animalistic ways he attacked me.”

Vorhees, Donnelly and Antonucci were all witnesses for the state. Vorhees, according to Buried Dreams, struggled through his testimony and was ultimately withdrawn as a witness. Donnelly, meanwhile, recalled on the witness stand how he was repeatedly drowned, tortured and raped by Gacy, per court documents. Antonucci also took the stand and spoke about his experience with Gacy attempting to handcuff and attack him, according to the docs.

Their testimony helped to convict Gacy on all 33 murder charges — the most any U.S. individual had ever been convicted of at that time, according to the Chicago Tribune. He was sentenced to death.

Several survivors of John Wayne Gacy have since spoken out about their ordeals

Gacy’s survivors have spoken about their encounters with the serial killer in books, television appearances, podcasts, theater performances and more.

Rignall wrote a memoir titled 29 Below about Gacy’s attack — and his investigative efforts to find him — in 1979. Bolton also wrote a book about his brush with Gacy, called A Hike Around the Lake: My Story of John Wayne Gacy, which was published in 2019. For Bolton, writing about the traumatic experience proved to be somewhat cathartic.

“I thought I’d go through life with the story buried in me,” he told the Peoria Journal Star.

Dati, who wrote a 2014 memoir titled I Am Me: Survivor of Child Abuse and Bullying Speaks Out, also found writing about Gacy’s attack to be therapeutic. He also hoped speaking out about his rape would encourage other victims sexual assault — including victims of Gacy’s — to come forward.

“Eighty-five percent of men and boys don’t come forward about being abused. I want to show them don’t be ashamed, don’t be fearful of what people think and come forward. You can survive this,” he told the Windy City Times in January 2014.

In October 2024, Merrill debuted a one-man show about about his life, including the night he was reportedly abducted and raped by Gacy. Called The Save, the coming-of-age story was performed at the Electric Lodge theater in Los Angeles and is coming to New York City in January 2026.

“Even telling my story, it’s never going to go away,” Merrill told PEOPLE about the play in October 2024. “But there are people who have been through worse — and I decided I’m going to have a good life. Doing the show, you’re up on stage in front of people and you are forced to deal with how you’re made.”

Other survivors, like Antonucci, have told their stories in true crime documentaries and television episodes about Gacy.

Jeffrey Rignall died in 2000

In the wake of Gacy’s attack, Rignall became depressed and withdrawn, suffering from bouts of vomiting and losing nearly 40 pounds, per The Courier Journal. He also endured permanent liver damage as a result of the chloroform that Gacy used on him. To help escape the horrific memories of his attack, Rignall and his partner, Ron Wilder, left the Chicago area in 1980 and moved to Louisville.

Life became “very difficult for him after the incident, after the assault,” Alex Danner, the executive producer of the Peacock docuseries John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise, told Oxygen in April 2021.

Rignall died in 2000 at the age of 49, per Oxygen.

John Wayne Gacy’s survivors continue to process the trauma of their attacks today

Some survivors of Gacy’s, such as Antonucci, have refused to let their brush with the infamous serial killer define them.

“This is not what I want to be remembered for as a person,” Antonucci said in A&E’s Close Encounters With Evil. “It hasn’t overly impacted my life. I don’t want something that is as perverse and negative and grotesque as this to have a big impact on me or my family.”

Merrill — an actor who has appeared on Law & Order and Sex and the City — adopted a similar attitude towards his assault. 

“I made a pact with myself at the time that he controlled me for one night but he would not control my life,” Merrill told PEOPLE in October 2024.

Other survivors, such as Dati, have found purpose in their pain. After coming forward with his story in 2011, Dati has worked as a public speaker and advocate for organizations like National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse and Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (RAINN).

“Where I lead with my advocacy is to tell people that it gets better and you need to have hope,” he told the Windy City Times in January 2014.

But for some, the horror of Gacy’s crimes continues to haunt them today. Bolton, who also served two tours in Vietnam and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a veteran, continues to work through the trauma of his encounter with Gacy more than six decades later.

“I still get jittery,” Bolton, a real estate investor, told the Peoria Journal Star. “I think of it every day of my life. I wish I could erase it.”