For my sins, I was the last PMC of the mess at Bentley Priory and was responsible for managing the return of various items to those who had loaned them and also for trying to get other stations to take things that belonged to the service. I still have the screwdriver that I used to remove the last nameplates from in front of the mess. We had a lot of items to return to Mr Whiting, which were of considerable value. Given that he lived in the south of France and the RAF insurers were terrified of anything being stolen enroute - we ran a Blackbuck style operation with a Ford Galaxy and a hot handover in an Ikea car park on outskirts of Dijon. The two of us on the last leg to Mr Whiting were rewarded with a lovely glass of red wine when we got to our destination. As for the alleged theft itself, it was way before my time but given the amount of stuff that we found during close down, anything is possible.
The close down itself was comical in many ways. The best was the scrap metal dealer who arrived to remove the Hunter Gate Guard. He took a saw to the outer skin of the wing and then tried to snap the wing off with a crane. We left them for a while before explaining the purpose of the main spar. The main thing I was most pleased about was that the person who bought the snooker table in the basement, managed to take it away themselves without us having to lift a finger.