Timer Job cannot delete an item (with error "item does not exist"), but console app can

Question

I have a list based on a calendar in SharePoint 2010 and I periodically run a timer job to archive items to another location, deleting them from the list. Most of the time this works just fine, but some items don't want to delete and give the exception:

Item does not exist. The page you selected contains an item that does not exist. It may have been deleted by another user.

The inner exception message is this:

Item does not exist.\n\nThe page you selected contains an item that does not exist. It may have been deleted by another user.0x81020016OWSSVR.DLL: (unresolved symbol, module offset=00000000000373D0) at 0x000007FEF66773D0\nmscorwks.dll: (unresolved symbol, module offset=00000000002BE757) at 0x000007FEF9A5E757\n

I've identified a single item and took a snapshot of my VM so I can try different techniques to try and delete it.

I can delete the item by clicking on "Delete" in the UI.
I can delete the item from a Console application

I cannot delete the item from the timer job even if I try RunWithElevatedPrivileges or if I impersonate the site owner while instantiating the SPSite object.

The items in this list do not have unique permissions, but the list itself does have unique permissions.

Please help me delete this item (and others like it).

Answer 1

I ended up saving out the item IDs of the problem items, then running a separate SPSite/SPWeb scope for each item and that got some of the stubborn items deleted.