The FBI exhumed a K-9 commander's dog in a cold case murder. But what really killed Fuzz?

Paul Kovacich, a K-9 commander serving life for his wife’s 1982 murder, has a mixed message for the California parole board ahead of his first chance of freedom: He doesn’t want an early release — and he didn’t kill his beloved German shepherd.

LOS ANGELES — Paul Kovacich, a K-9 commander serving life for his wife’s 1982 murder, has a mixed message for the California parole board ahead of his first chance of freedom: He doesn’t want an early release — and he didn’t kill his beloved German shepherd.

Far from admitting guilt, the 76-year-old argues that newly discovered FBI misconduct should reverse his 2009 conviction in a cold case that haunted the Northern California foothills. His defense team contends that long-suppressed evidence debunks decades-old claims that Kovacich stomped Fuzz, his badge-wearing K-9, to death weeks before his wife disappeared. Her body has never been found.

The dog’s demise became a focal point for the FBI years after Janet Kovacich vanished, as agents exhumed and analyzed Fuzz’s remains in a bid to prove her husband harbored violent tendencies. Paul Kovacich contends that was a red herring that misled jurors into convicting him, and he’s using his first parole hearing Thursday as an opening salvo to clear his name.

“I would love to have the courts release me — not parole,” Kovacich told The Associated Press in an interview this month from the California Institution for Men. “I have something to prove — that I’m innocent.”

Kovacich’s bid hinges on never-before-seen emails between a forensic anthropologist and a veteran FBI agent who used his personal Hotmail account to describe Kovacich as “our bad guy” and, before testing, walk the expert through the “need to demonstrate to the jury that he has a violent side.”