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(Stouffer Realty Inc.)

Jeffrey Dahmer

BATH TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- A national animal-rights organization has suggested serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood home in Summit County be turned into a vegan restaurant.

The three-bedroom, three-bath home, on West Bath Road in Bath Township, was recently listed for sale at $295,000.

The house is where Dahmer killed the first of his 17 victims. In 1978, he killed and dismembered a 19-year-old hitchhiker Steven Hicks in the house. He scattered the remains on the 1.5-acre property.

"We're always looking for ways to turn cruelty on its ugly head, so when we heard that serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood home had been put up for sale, we saw an opportunity to create good out of evil," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals posted on its website. "Rather than remaining as a stark reminder of its dark past, the building can instead become the site of a celebration of culinary compassion."

Dahmer was eventually convicted of 16 murders and sentenced to life in prison, where he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate in 1994.

“Like Dahmer’s human victims, cows, pigs, and chickens are made of flesh and blood and fear for their lives when confronted by a man with a knife,” wrote PETA, who sent a letter to the realtor handling Dahmer’s house on Friday, according to news reports. “They are also drugged and dragged, and their limbs are bound. Their struggles and screams are ignored as they are killed and cut up to be consumed. Their bones are thrown away like garbage.”

The organization suggested the home be transformed into a vegan restaurant named “Eat for Life—Home Cooking.”

The home is in a residential neighborhood.

Bill Funk, the township’s zoning inspector and administrator,

that the

building and lot are poorly suited for a restaurant. He said the house has well water and a septic system, and the sloped, wooded lot would make parking difficult.

“I think they’d have a lot of hurdles to jump,” he said.

Richard Lubinski, the listing agent for Stouffer Realty Inc., raised concerns about the zoning but said he’s willing to discuss a possible transaction with PETA, the Beacon Journal said.

“I think it’s great,” he said. “If they want to buy it and repurpose it, that’s phenomenal.”

Lubinski said he wasn’t sure whether PETA was serious about the offer or just looking for publicity. But “I’m certainly going to treat it as a serious lead at this point,” he said.

The 2,170-square-foot, midcentury modern house has been on and off the market since 2012. The current owner, musician Chris Butler, has said he bought the house in 2005 to have a place to stay when he visited Akron, but he no longer has reason to spend much time in the area, the Beacon Journal reported.