PARIS — It was shortly after the beautiful heist of the crown jewels on the Louvre when Paris-based Related Press photographer Thibault Camus caught in his body a dapperly dressed younger man strolling by uniformed French cops, their automobile blocking one of many museum gates.
Instinctively, he took the shot.
It wasn’t a very nice picture, with somebody’s shoulder obscuring a part of the foreground, Camus instructed himself.
Nevertheless it did the job – exhibiting French police sealing off the world’s most-visited museum after the brazen daylight theft final Sunday.
Plus, Camus figured, the man strolling previous the officers was unusually nicely dressed, in a coat, a jacket and tie and carrying a fedora, including a contact of Paris couture to the scene.
And so off went the picture to AP’s worldwide audiences.
From there, fertile imaginations sprung into excessive gear – whipping up a web based buzz.
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Posts on social media declared the well-dressed man to be a French detective – if you’ll, a extra dashing model of the famed Inspector Clouseau from “Pink Panther” motion pictures – although AP’s picture caption had not recognized him.
It merely learn: “Cops block an entry to the Louvre museum after a theft Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025, in Paris.”
A put up on X that now has 5.6 million views says: “Precise shot (not AI!) of a French detective working the case of the French Crown Jewels that had been stolen from the Louvre.”
One other poster – with 1.2 million followers – claimed the person “who appears like he got here out of a detective movie noir from the Forties is an precise French police detective who’s investigating the theft.”
Camus says nothing he noticed led him to that conclusion – the person was simply somebody who streamed away from the Louvre as authorities evacuated the realm, Camus says.
“He appeared in entrance of me, I noticed him, I took the picture,” Camus says. “He handed by and left.”
If the unidentified man actually is among the greater than 100 investigators looking for the jewel thieves, the authorities are protecting it very hush-hush.
“We might reasonably maintain the thriller alive ;)” the Paris prosecutor’s workplace mentioned with a wink in an electronic mail response to AP questions.
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