Backup drive lost all images transferred over

The beginning of this month I helped a friend back up her photos onto an external drive. We moved over 10K photos and then around 400 music files.
We then set up Time Machine to back up everything as it should. I checked her settings and compared them with mine on my iMac and it all checked out fine.
Time machine has been backing up her stuff as normal but MANY things are missing.
Once we moved all her important stuff to those folders outside of the time machine backups, we ejected the external and then proceeded to clean up and remove those images from her iPhoto to clear up space on her computer. She doesn't have a very big hard drive and she simply ran out of room. Putting those images on the external was intended to preserve them.
They are gone. ALL of them and she has not used the laptop since that day other than to let time machine back up.
We work together over Team Viewer to do this as she lives in another state.
Other than her lying to me, what could have made 10K photos disappear? ALL the movies are there. only the photos disappeared.
Also, the backup in Time Machine does not have the lost images. Makes no sense. We both SAW all those images there, saved and in proper order.
Also, she uses DropBox and we moved all the stuff from there to the external for safe keeping and the same thing - the folder is there, but the images are gone. Only the movies are preserved.
How can Time Machine only preserve select images from iPhoto and if she didn't do anything to those folders, how could they be removed  from the external?
Now, I am pretty sure I can rebuild what is left in the Time Machine backup from the iPhoto app, but I'm not sure if it will back up.
I did see inside her Pictures directory an iPhoto Library_backup copy icon AND a directory titled iPhoto Library_backup.
INSIDE the directory I can open it up and see a directory titled "before restore" and in there are two databases. iPhotoAux.db and iPhotoMain.db. Would either or both of these be what I need to use to restore old things back on her drive?
I found those inside the iPhoto app where it says "import" and that directory was the only thing highlighted as something I can restore. It shouldn't duplicate images should it? I would expect it to skip duplicates.
I'm at a loss. We both saw all those images in the external and now they're gone.
Her machine:
Macbook Pro with 250GB drive
OSX 10.9.5

There is no way not to spend money.  Prosoft Data Rescue offers a demo.  You might be able to try one of the other tools as well.  
Partitioning actually does wipe the data pretty well, so while it may be there, it may be very hard to get at it.
Never partition a drive that has the only copy of data you need. Always backup first.

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