If I saw a villager take the time to remove a magic item from a dead body and return it to a mage, I would boot them and try to kill them. That doesn't mean that you can just leave things in the corpse, OOC you know that they will return anyway due to game mechanics.
Why would you care to strip clothes/items off of a dead body to return to a mage anyway - especially magic items. And from a guy that just tried to murder you? You aren't friends - he just tried to kill you, and perhaps steal a relic that is sacred to you.
Removing those leggings from that mangled and bleeding corpse, exposing the mage's "wand", to return them seems odd to me. Now consider that when he died he likely evacuated his bowels -and- they are magical leggings? Something is wrong with that villager.
But, then again, CF is ultra-lite RP so...not many people even think twice about doing these things.