Photos disappeared off computer and external hard drive

I'm stumped.
This morning I opened iPhoto (8.1.2) and got an error message that the library needed to be rebuilt. When I clicked ok I got a second error message that the files were corrupt and iPhoto closed.
After some reading, I saved my library and imported a recent one from Timemachine. Same thing.
More reading and I downloaded iPhoto Library Manager and rebuilt the imported file, then the original file.
In both cases many photos are corrupted, but worse, every photo for the past two years is missing. Worse, when I look in the files in Timemachine, every backup of my iPhoto Library is missing photos from 2010 on. I used iPhoto a few weeks ago and everything was fine and have done a Timemachine backup since then. So I'm pretty sure I haven't been saving a buggered Library for several years.
I'm using a MacBook Pro with 10.6.8.
I don't do a lot of internal fiddling with my Mac, so if you have ideas about what has gone wrong you will need to be very specific about where I look and what I do.
Thanks in advance.

as of now, they all work, but I want to get rid of the ones that are on my computer hard drive because it is really full. I was just worried that if I delete the folder from my computer, I would still have everything duplicated, but the files that had previously been on my computer would show up with exclamation points. I wanted to know if, once I delete the folder from my computer, there is an easy way to get rid of all the duplicates that don't work.

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