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Shortly after the audacious robbery of the crown jewels at the Louvre, Paris-based Associated Press photographer Thibault Camus captured a remarkable moment.
As uniformed French police officers closed one of the gates of the museum, his car forming a barricade, Camus instinctively noticed an attractively dressed young man passing by.
He initially considered it “not a particularly great picture”, noting that a shoulder was obscuring the foreground.
Still, the image effectively conveyed the scene: French police protecting the world’s most visited museum after a Sunday daylight robbery.
Furthermore, Camus surmised, the man passing by the officers was unusually well dressed, wearing a trench coat, a jacket and tie and wearing a fedora, adding a touch Paris Clothing for the scene.
And that’s how the photo reached AP’s worldwide audience.
From there, fertile imaginations grew rapidly – sparking discussion online.
Posts on social media declared the well-dressed man French The detective — if you will, a more daring version of the famous Inspector Clouseau from the “Pink Panther” films — even though the AP’s photo caption did not identify him.
It simply read: “police officer block access to louvre The museum after the robbery on Sunday, October 19, 2025, in Paris,
A post on louvre,
Another poster – with 1.2 million followers – claimed that the man “who looks like he came from a 1940s spy film noir is a real French police detective investigating a theft.”
Camus says that nothing he saw led him to this conclusion – the man was just someone who walked away from the Louvre as the authorities evacuated the area, Camus says.
“He appeared before me, I looked at him, I took the photo,” says Camus. “He passed by and went away.”
If the unidentified man is indeed one of more than 100 investigators are hunting for the jewel thieves, officials are keeping it a tight secret.
“We would like to keep the mystery alive ;),” the Paris prosecutor’s office said with a wink in an emailed response to questions from the AP.