The Biurny Peguero and William McCaffrey Story

For those of you who did not watch the ABC 20/20 episode online or on TV last Friday, Biurny Peguero falsely accused William McCaffrey of rape. Even though she went to the hospital and had a rape test done to preserve any possible DNA and none was found, William was still sentenced to 20 years in prison on her emotional testimony, of which he served four years before he was set free.

Read moreBiurny eventually felt so much guilt that she found the church, confessed and eventually came clean. She is now serving time for her deception. She was sentenced to 1-3 years on multiple accounts of perjury. While what Biurny did was horrific, you have to give it to her for coming forward and having a conscience. What she did is unheard of.

I found the video clip I posted here fascinating because it was a great example of a low stakes scenario. The stakes of a once high situation are now gone, and with that, people become a lot harder to read. If you didn’t know this was a low stake scenario and that McCaffrey was already out of prison and cleared, you might have judged William’s smiles or behavior as deceptive. That would be a mistake. I wanted to show you the power of lie stake lies.

I suspect William, when he was interviewed, knew that ABC 20/20 knew he was innocent, so when they asked him about it, he couldn’t help but smile, like he knew he was just repeating this for the sake of the camera. William was amazingly kind and forgiving considering all he had been through, if you watch the entire episode. He is an amazing man, though he hasn’t always made good choices himself.

Many of you noticed the twitches in his face. I speculate that these twitches are connected to William’s emotional memory of the pain he felt by being wrongly convicted. Sometimes when people hold back emotions they twitch like this. People can twitch, however, for many, many reasons and very few would be a hint to deception!

With Biurney, her deception came barreling through regardless of the low stakes, but this does not always happen, I can’t stress that enough. We may have seen it this time because she wasn’t invested in deceiving us as this story was about her confession.

When I heard Biurney say “He raped me”, I was immediately on alert. She was as emotionless as a coffee mug on the kitchen table. The lack of emotions are equally as powerful as the presence of them and hence, they should never be discounted.

If you’ve been violated by a stranger like Biurney said she was, you don’t fail to have an emotional memory. That was a huge clue to the truth here, and likely was at William’s trial as well, but people are emotional creatures, and the idea of someone being raped can cause ill-will and bad feelings towards those in the cross-hairs, which likely resulted in William’s guilty verdict. I see emotional biases rear up on my blog quite frequently, too. It’s part of being human, just few people are aware that they have these biases and that they influence our ability to see the truth. They will absolutely fog us in, if we aren’t aware of them.

At the end of this clip, we see Biurney talk about hearing the news that William was convicted and sentenced to twenty years. She doesn’t seem pleased or happy. She lets out a deep sigh, a stress sigh, and she talks about how she started crying and wanted to be alone. I will bet many of you had a gut response here that something wasn’t right, but perhaps you discounted it? Take that as a warning that your intuitive senses are important and should be acknowledged. You don’t have to just believe them, but at the very minimum you should dig further to see what you can find! It’s your intuitive sense showing you a red flag.

Remember, before you judge someone, be careful to assess the situation. Are there “high stakes” involved? If there aren’t, be very, very cautious!