Three weeks after the Louvre Museum robbery, while the police were trying to find out who was behind the incident and how the royal jewelry could be stolen so easily, a mysterious photograph also made headlines.
“Who was the man with the bowler hat”?
The stylish young man with a hat was photographed outside the museum on the Sunday when the robbery took place, and it went viral on social media.
Theories about his identity were proposed.
The police arrested four people in connection with the robbery. However, the man with the bowler hat remained a mystery until now.
The identity of this young man has finally been discovered.
The young man who looked like an actor from a detective movie was named Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux and he was 15 years old.
A Sherlock Holmes fan, the young man coincidentally found himself in a real crime scene on the day he went to the museum.
When he asked the police what was happening, he was photographed by an Associated Press reporter who wanted to capture the security cordon.
Regarding that moment, he replied, “I didn’t know a theft was happening.”
Pedro learned that the photo had gone viral after a friend sent him a screenshot four days later asking, “Is that you?”
His friend said the photo had been viewed five million times on TikTok.
His mother calling to tell him the photo was published in The New York Times surprised him even more.
The prosecutor stated that the four people charged with the case were “local residents” living in Seine-Saint-Denis, a poor area north of Paris.
On October 19, jewelry worth 88 million euros was stolen from one of the most visited museums in France, the Louvre.
One of the four arrested individuals was a woman, and it is also noted that one of the suspects has a child.
The suspects arrived at the Apollo Gallery from a balcony near the Seine River using a mechanical lift mounted on a stolen vehicle, and used a cutter to open the display cases holding the jewelry.
The prosecutors said the thieves stayed inside for four minutes and escaped with two scooters waiting outside before switching to cars.
One of the stolen items, a crown, fell during the escape; seven other pieces of jewelry could not be found.
The prosecutor in charge of the case said they are still hopeful that the jewelry can be recovered intact, but there is concern that these jewels have already been smuggled abroad.
Since the incident, security measures around France’s cultural institutions have been tightened.
After the robbery, the Louvre handed over some of its most valuable jewelry to the Bank of France.
When asked why Pedro went to the museum dressed in an old-fashioned vest and bowler hat, he said he had recently started dressing this way inspired by statesmen and fictional detectives from the last century.
While there were crazy speculations online about his photo, some even claimed the photo was generated by artificial intelligence.
Louvre Museum was robbed by ordinary criminals
Meanwhile, the real police arrested four people related to the robbery.
The Paris prosecutor said that the jewelry theft was carried out by petty criminals rather than organized crime members.
Prosecutor Laure Beccuau stated in an interview with a radio that there was no powerful organized crime gang behind the robbery.
