A mysterious man in the Louvre Museum robbery photo is causing a sensation

That was an amazing short time later The Crown Jewels were stolen from the Louvre Museum When Paris-based Associated Press photographer Thibaut Camus captured a smartly dressed young man walking past uniformed French police officers, their car blocking one of the museum’s gates.

Instinctively, he fired.

The picture wasn’t particularly impressive, as someone’s shoulder was blocking part of the foreground, Camus thought to himself.

But it did the job, as the French police showed The most visited museum in the world is closed after Brazen robbery in broad daylight Last Sunday.

In addition, Camus saw that the man who was walking past the officers was unusually well dressed, wearing a coat, jacket, tie, and wearing a fedora, adding a touch of Parisian haute couture to the scene.

And so the photo traveled to AP audiences around the world.

From here, fertile imaginations ran into high gear, creating a buzz on the Internet.

Posts on social media declared the smartly dressed man to be a French detective — if you will, a more glamorous version of the famous Inspector Clouzot from the “Pink Panther” films — though the AP photo caption did not identify him.

It simply read: “Police officers block access to the Louvre Museum after a robbery on Sunday, October 19, 2025 in Paris.”

“Actual footage (not AI!) of a French detective working on the case of the French Crown Jewels stolen from the Louvre,” says one post on"

Another poster – followed by 1.2 million people – claimed that the man “who looks like he stepped out of a 1940s detective film noir is a real French police detective investigating the robbery.”"

Nothing he saw led him to this conclusion, Camus says. The man was just someone who walked out of the Louvre while authorities evacuated the area, Camus says.

“He appeared in front of me, I saw him, and I took the picture,” says Camus. “He passed and left.”

If the unidentified man is indeed one of more than 100 investigators searching for the jewelry thieves, authorities are keeping quiet about it.

“We prefer to keep the mystery alive ;),” the Paris prosecutor’s office said with a wink in an email response to AP questions.