I think you've hit the nail on the head as to the discrepancy between his pleasant apologetic manner over parcels, and his abuse of your property. He exhibited a gross lack of care when living in your property and his "pleasant" demeanour is facade to distract people from delving deeper and to hide his real self. In cases of abuse, the abuser controls the "small" things, such as parcels because they can't control the bigger issues, such as how he treated your property. It's a manipulative tactic to deceive people as to his real identity and intentions. He will probably treat his new place the same. If his new landlords didn't seek references they won't know any better, so in essence he's gotten off scot free.