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Draper >> After more than a decade behind bars, the killers of a 3-year-old girl — the child's mother and a family friend — not only continue to deny their guilt, they also claim to be victims of a conspiracy involving prosecutors, police, a medical examiner and pediatricians.

"For the last 12 years, I've been stating time and time again, I'm innocent," Ferosa Bluff said Tuesday during a hearing before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. "People who know me know this isn't possible. It couldn't have happened."

Bluff, 38, and Andrew Fedorowicz, 57, who also denies committing any crime, are serving up to life in prison for the 1998 torture killing of Rebecca Bluff.

The pair, who once attributed the girls' injuries to a fall down some carpeted stairs, claim officials committed 258 felonies by lying under oath and conspiring amongst themselves to convict them of murder, child abuse and sexual abuse of a child. Bluff and Fedorowicz said Tuesday their own post-trial research shows the girl died from a blood disorder that was not tested for at the time.

But trial evidence showed the girl died from massive bruising after she was apparently bound, beaten and whipped at Fedorowicz's Salt Lake County home. An autopsy photo of the dead girl showed her buttocks were a solid blue-black mass of bruising, with lighter-colored bruises up her back and down her legs. Experts said the shape of a number of bruises matched a cat-o'-nine tails, leather straps and restraints with metal buckles seized by police from the home.

Instruments of the same sort apparently were used to cause injuries to the girl's genital area. Even the soles of the girl's feet had been beaten, in a manner that medical examiner Maureen Frikke testified was used in some parts of the world as outright torture.

The whips and restraints were linked to the defendants through testimony about a videotape which showed Bluff and Fedorowicz using some of the instruments while participating in sadomasochistic sex with Andrew Fedrowicz's wife.

Parole guidelines call for Bluff and Andrew Fedorowicz to serve 21 years in prison, with a release date in December 2019. But parole board member Angela Micklos said that based on their refusal to accept responsibility, and "the horrific abuse Rebecca suffered," she may recommend that other board members choose to keep the pair in prison for life.

"You don't leave me with a lot of options," Micklos told Fedorowicz.

Appearing at the hearing as a victim, Bluff's former husband instead spoke in support of Fedorowicz and Bluff. Todd Wallace said the pair were "completely innocent" in his daughter's death and that he plans to pursue a federal inquiry into the prosecution and trial.

Case began in '98 when Bluff came to Utah

R In early October 1998, Ferosa Bluff, who had separated from her husband in Alberta, Canada, came to Utah to stay with Andrew Fedorowicz and his wife, who also are Canadian citizens.

On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 1998, Bluff called 911 to report her 3-year-old daughter, Rebecca, had fainted and was not breathing. However, medical examiner Maureen Frikke testified that Rebecca likely died several hours before the 911 call, based on her low body temperature.

Fedorowicz admitted to spanking Rebecca repeatedly in the prior two weeks "for disciplinary reasons." Bluff was implicated in Rebecca's death when she told police she had been with her daughter "24/7" since coming to the U.S.