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This happened soon after the stunning robbery of the crown jewels louvre When Paris-based Associated Press photographer Thibault Camus saw an attractively dressed young man in uniform walking into his frame French Police officers are blocking a gate of the museum with their car.
Instinctively, he took the shot.
It wasn’t a particularly good photo, Camus said to himself, with someone’s shoulder in the foreground being obscured.
But it worked – French police were shown sealing off the world’s most visited museum after a daylight robbery last Sunday.
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 a French spy — 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 Access to the Louvre Museum is blocked after a robbery in Paris on Sunday, October 19, 2025.
A post on
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.