PARIS (AP) — It was shortly after the stunning heist of a treasure at the Louvre that Paris-based Associated Press photographer Thibaut Camus captured a dapperly dressed young man walking alongside a uniformed French police officer blocking one of the museum’s gates with his car.
Instinctively he took the shot.
Camus told himself that it wasn’t a particularly great photo, with someone’s shoulders obscuring part of the foreground.
But the piece, which showed French police locking down the world’s most-visited museum after a daytime robbery last Sunday, did its job.
Additionally, the man walking in front of the officers was unusually well-dressed, wearing a coat, jacket, tie, and fedora, which Camus thought added to the atmosphere of Parisian haute couture.
The photos were then sent to AP’s global audience.
From there, a rich imagination accelerated and created a buzz online.
Social media posts declared the well-dressed man to be a French detective — a more dashing version of the famous Inspector Clouzot from “The Pink Panther,” if you will — even though he was not identified in the Associated Press photo caption.
It simply read: “On Sunday, October 19, 2025, a robbery occurred in Paris and police officers prevented entry to the Louvre.”
X’s post, which has now been viewed 5.6 million times, reads: “An actual shot (not AI!) of a French detective investigating the case of the French Crown Jewels stolen from the Louvre.”
Another poster, who has 1.2 million followers, claimed the man “looks like something out of a 1940s detective film noir and is a real French police detective investigating a theft.”
Camus stated that nothing he saw led him to such a conclusion. Camus said the man was simply someone who had fled the Louvre as authorities evacuated the area.
“He appeared before me, I saw him and took a picture,” says Camus. “He walked past and left.”
If the unidentified man is indeed one of more than 100 investigators pursuing the jewel thief, authorities will keep it top secret.
“We would rather keep the mystery alive ;),” the Paris public prosecutor’s office said with a wink in an email in response to questions from The Associated Press.
