I had one of those experiences as well, but in my case, "version control is for the weak". he had multiple copies of the code deployed for different customers, and could never reconcile. unfortunately, the tech scene here is very well connected and I learned way too much about his personal life.

in my case, I ended up just rewriting to be multi-tenant with a fully different stack, and let him disappear; it was really what ended up being the best for the company and my sanity.