Captured on film at the Louvre on the day of the heist, a 15-year-old Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot enthusiast decided to lean into the mystery rather than shy away from it.
The fedora-wearing Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux did not rush online to unmask himself despite theories he was the French detective given the task of solving the nation’s ‘most humiliating heist’.
He isn’t an AI fake, a police officer, or an turncoat gangster hiding in plain sight. He is simply a young boy who lives with his parents and grandfather in Rambouillet.
Pedro said: ‘I didn’t want to say immediately it was me. With this photo, there is a mystery, so you have to make it last.’
For his only in-person interview since the photo that made him an unlikely enigma worthy of a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel, he arrived dressed exactly as he had on the day of the so-called ‘heist of the century.’
Wearing a fedora hat, Yves Saint Laurent waistcoat borrowed from his father, jacket chosen by his mother, neat tie, Tommy Hilfiger trousers, and a restored, war-battered Russian watch, he was ready to talk.
The image that made him a famous mystery was meant to document a crime scene with three police officers leaning on a silver car blocking a Louvre entrance.
He was a flash of film noir in a modern-day manhunt for thieves who committed blatant robbery in broad daylight.
Pedro understood why there were crazy theories as to who he was, standing there in his three-piece cream and black outfit. He said: ‘ In the photo, I’m dressed more in the 1940s, and we are in 2025, there is a contrast.’
It turns out there was no real mystery to why he was there on the day of the heist – he simply wanted to visit the Louvre with his mother and grandfather.
Unaware of the robbery that had just taken place, they asked the officers outside why the gates were closed, which is when an AP photographer took the photo.
Pedro was oblivious to the photo until, four days later, one of his friends asked if it was him in the viral picture.
‘She told me there were five million views and I was a bit surprised,’ he said.
Soon after, his mother called to tell him he’d appeared in The New York Times – a discovery quickly echoed by cousins, family friends and classmates flooding his phone with screenshots.
Pedro said: ‘People said ‘You’ve become a star’ and I was astonished that with just one photo you can become viral in a few days.’
His style of clothes wasn’t just a one-off choice. He began dressing this way less than a year ago, inspired by 20th-century history and fictional detectives.
‘I like to be chic,’ he said. ‘I go to school like this.’ But the fedora is reserved for weekends, holidays and museum visits.