Police: Robbers made off with just $170 after killing 5 at Fero's Bar
By Sadie Gurman
The Denver Post
Three men short on cash thought they would rob a Denver bar, leave no witnesses and torch the evidence, prosecutors say.
But a fourth man with them that night was a federal informant who told Denver police within hours about the botched heist in which five people were fatally stabbed inside Fero's Bar & Grill.
Those details emerged Friday in testimony from Denver police homicide Detective Mark Crider during a preliminary hearing for Dexter Bernard Lewis, 22; Joseph Hill, 27; and Lynell Jonathan Hill, 24, who are charged with five counts each of first-degree murder, felony murder, robbery and arson in the Oct. 17 attack. ...
Lynell Hill needed fast cash to cover costs of an unrelated court case, so the trio hatched a plan to rob Fero's, Joseph Hill told Crider. He was familiar with the establishment. Fero, the bar's owner, was Joseph Hill's landlady. He and his brother wore Halloween masks — the Hulk and Iron Man, respectively — so that she wouldn't recognize them, Crider testified that Joseph Hill told him.
Yet the men would make off with just $170 before fetching a gas canister from a nearby Loaf 'N Jug and torching the business in a failed effort to destroy the evidence of their rampage, Crider said. ...
Harris said he had gone into the bathroom when he heard a door slam. When he came out, Joseph and Lynell Hill were inside wearing masks and the trio were ordering people to the floor, demanding their wallets and credit cards. Joseph Hill started looting the registers, Crider said.
Lewis "just stabbed people over and over and over again," while the brothers held the patrons at gunpoint. Harris said he and Joseph Hill passed the knife back and forth and that he told Joseph Hill to kill Fero because "they couldn't have any witnesses," Crider said. Joseph Hill bent down and slit her throat. ...
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