PARIS (AP) — It was shortly after the stunning heist of the crown jewels at the Louvre when Paris-based Associated Press photographer Thibault Camus caught in his frame a dapperly dressed young man walking by uniformed French police officers, their car blocking one of the museum gates.
Instinctively, he took the shot.
It wasn’t a particularly great photo, with someone’s shoulder obscuring part of the foreground, Camus told himself.
But it did the job — showing French police sealing off the world’s most-visited museum after the brazen daylight robbery last Sunday.
Plus, Camus figured, the guy walking past the officers was unusually well dressed, in a coat, a jacket and tie and wearing a fedora, adding a touch of Paris couture to the scene.
And so off went the photo to AP’s worldwide audiences.
From there, fertile imaginations sprung into high gear — whipping up an online buzz.
Posts on social media declared the well-dressed man to be a French detective — if you will, a more dashing version of the famed Inspector Clouseau from “Pink Panther” movies — even though AP’s photo caption had not identified him.
It simply read: “Police officers block an access to the Louvre museum after a robbery Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025, in Paris.”
A post on X that now has 5.6 million views says: “Actual shot (not AI!) of a French detective working the case of the French Crown Jewels that were stolen from the Louvre.”
Another poster — with 1.2 million followers — claimed the man “who looks like he came out of a detective film noir from the 1940s is an actual French police detective who’s investigating the theft.”
Camus says nothing he saw led him to that conclusion — the man was just someone who streamed away from the Louvre as authorities evacuated the area, Camus says.
“He appeared in front of me, I saw him, I took the photo,” Camus says. “He passed by and left.”
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If the unidentified man really is one of the more than 100 investigators hunting for the jewel thieves, the authorities are keeping it very hush-hush.
“We’d rather keep the mystery alive ;)” the Paris prosecutor’s office said with a wink in an email response to AP questions.