Mystery dapper ‘fedora man’ pictured at Louvre heist scene is finally unmasked

A MYSTERY “fedora man” has been unmasked three weeks after he was photographed outside the Louvre following the theft of the crown jewels.

The image of the dapper teenager outside the museum on the day of the theft went viral on social media – sparking theories about his identity.

Finally the truth has emerged, unmasking the online enigma as 15-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux.

The Rambouillet teen, a fan of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, coincidentally happened to be at the scene of the crime on that fateful Sunday.

Looking as though he had walked off a runway in the 1940s, Pedro was wearing a brown fedora tipped over one eye coupled with an Yves Saint Laurent waistcoat, cutting a smart figure in the Parisian streets.

He said he had been with his family, planning to visit the museum, when they found it to be closed.

“We didn’t know there was a heist,” he said.

He was snapped outside the museum while asking officers about the closure, only later realising the photo had gone viral.

Following the chaos of the £76million theft of the French crown jewels, the imagination of social media users went wild, with many thinking Pedro was an “old-timey detective”.

He said he was “a bit surprised” to find the image had received five million views on TikTok after his friend sent him a screenshot of the image, asking “Is that you?”

The avid fan of literary detectives didn’t immediately contact police about the image, which his mother found had later appeared in the New York Times.

“I didn’t want to say immediately it was me,” Pedro said.

“With this photo there is a mystery, so you have to make it last.”

“In the photo, I’m dressed more in the 1940s, and we are in 2025. There is a contrast,” he added.

He was however, surprised at the impact of the image, saying “it’s not every day you’re in the New York Times”.

“People said, ‘You’ve become a star’,” he said.

“I was astonished that just with one photo you can become viral in a few days.”

Of his fashion sense, Pedro said he “[likes] to be chic”, admitting he attends school in similar attire.

Despite his surprise that his photo reached as far as the New York Times, he said he understood the intrigue around his identity

“When something unusual happens, you don’t imagine a normal detective,” he said.

“You imagine someone different.”

Since the spectacular theft on October 19, police have made various arrests, including that of a daredevil influencer.

Abdoulaye N., 39, is known online as Doudou Cross Bitume or The Motocross Legend, and once worked as a museum security guard.

He was arrested on October 29 and charged with organised theft and criminal conspiracy after what French media are calling the “heist of the century”.

Investigators suspect Abdoulaye and an accomplice used a cherry-picker truck to reach a first-floor window of the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery.

Abdoulaye reportedly has 15 previous convictions, mostly for minor offences including driving without a licence and resisting arrest.

The seven-minute smash-and-grab heist saw “highly organised” thieves scale the side of the world-famous museum before smashing inside and making off with a stash of some of the world’s premier treasures.

The four men pulled up on scooters to the museum at around 9:30am, targeting the side of the Apollo Gallery building facing the River Seine.

None of the treasures, including a diamond-encrusted crown and historic diadems, have yet been recovered.