36 Photograph by Jeff Brown
t was just supposed to
have been a quick Saturday-morning errand to buy picture hooks. On
March 7, 2015, Harvard Law professor Bruce Hay, then 52, was in Tags
Hardware in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near his home, when a young
woman with long reddish-brown hair approached him to ask where she
could find batteries. It was still very much winter, and, once the woman
got his attention, he saw that underneath her dark woolen coat and per-
fectly tied scarf she was wearing a dress and a chic pair of boots—hardly
typical weekend-errand attire in the New England college town. When he
directed her to another part of the store, she changed the subject. “By the
way, you’re very attractive,” he remembers her saying.The Most
Gullible Man
in Cambridge
A Harvard Law
professor who teaches
a class on judgment
wouldn’t seem like an
obvious mark, would he?
By Kera Bolonik