You think you and your mate have been badly treated.
Actually, no. Everyone leant over backwards, even though he was rude, lied, verbally abusive whenever you weren't there and took the credit for things he hadn't done.
Telling us now that he was going to do all these marvellous things has absolutely no credence as our experience was he never did anything that he wasn't either cornered into or for his own benefit.
Trying to stop others from doing things they have agreed with us by saying now he's gone they don't want to to do is childish at best. We can talk to them, you know, and know that isn't the case.
And no, the local people aren't mourning he's not working with you any more. I can tell you they've got the same opinion as us. Yes, even those people you said "were best friends and would do anything for him". Some of those were the ones that warned us about his behaviour back at the beginning. Telling us otherwise does not convince us anything other than you're grasping at straws that don't exist.
And btw telling us we shouldn't take things personally when he'd been verbally abusive was particularly offensive.
So, grow up and stop behaving like a stroppy child. It wasn't that everyone was against him for no reason. It was that his behaviour was a constant problem.
But actually you are to blame too. Because every time someone raised a concern you leapt into protective mode. You did missing work for him. You removed people that raised concerns from positions where they could try and help. You denied that he'd done things. When he did things that you'd blown up at others for doing, you suddenly thought we were all being fussy and you started doing it too. In meetings we all knew you were messaging him to tell him what to say-he admitted it btw if you want to deny it.
If it really got to the point that you needed to talk to him about an issue, then he gave you an excuse that would have made dc as a toddler blush (and they were the master of bad excuses) and you came to tell everyone how life was so hard for him because he'd found a hole in his sock that morning, or something similar.
I wonder how it would have gone if you had pulling him up properly the first time concerns were raised. You never gave him a chance to improve because you always covered for him. Just like a spoilt toddler, why should he bother to do anything if you covered for him? So, yes, you do have to take some of the blame.
You can also take the blame for bullying. You think we don't know what happened in January because someone dared pull him up (rightfully)? That was bullying by both of you, and you have continued to be a bully and undermine the rest of the staff.
We trusted you until he came on the scene. You were trustworthy. Now if you told me the sky is blue, I'd look out of the window to confirm. It's going to take a long time to trust you again because we've seen a nasty side that's going to stay with us.
When I spoke to my doctor needing sick leave due to stress-yes that was stress entirely down to this situation, I described some of the things that had been going on and she asked if you two were in a relationship. That's what it's like. You're like a teenage lover who's just found the person he adores and can't see anything wrong. he's the abuser in a domestic abuse relationship.
I think you think it's returned. It's not. You've surrounded yourself with him and his friends who are rubbing their hands as to what they can get out of you. If you start not giving them that, you'll find they drift away.
If you don't get out from them, then you're not going to change because they're dripping poison into your brain.
So you have to stand up and take the consequences. I'm not going to believe any apology after the last one (which I did-but you went straight back to continuing with the same behaviour afterwards).
If you want any hope of being trusted again you need to break free of him. You won't though, because you won't admit even with physical evidence in front of you that there was ever any problem.
Yes, the whole situation was mostly him to blame. But you have to take the responsibility for allowing him to behave like that. For shielding him from any consequence of his actions. And you also have to take responsibility for bullying to try and get your own way. two years ago I'd never have thought it of you. But you have shown that you will throw anyone and everyone under a bus to get your own way as long as your buddy didn't have to face any consequence of his actions.
Unless you acknowledge all the above then there is little possibility of moving on fully. We can work together, but the trust has forever been broken between you and pretty much everyone else.
That's not everyone else's fault btw.