Help! Lost contact/iMessage/attachment

Ok, we need some help.

I received an iMessage last night with an important image attachment. I replied to the sender. This morning I woke up, and the message/conversation was gone. The only thing I can think of is that I or my wife deleted the message by accident SOMEHOW:mad:. I do not have the sender in my address book already, and have no other way to contact them.

1. Is there any way to recover the sender's email/phone (however he is registered with iMessage)?
2. Is there any way to recover the image attachment? <- most important
3. I wouldn't mind the conversation either.

I was using an iPhone 4, jailbroken on 6.1.0 (T-mob), and BiteSMS. I have access to a MBP on 10.9.

I pulled the entire attachments folder with iExplorer, but out of the thousand of images, I couldn't find the attachment in question. I had not backed up the phone since yesterday, but may have synced it with iTunes at some point.

I've googled around and keep getting the same pay-for-recovery apps being promoted by fake help threads. I wouldn't mind paying, but my understanding is that they all just look in the same folder that I have already pulled and checked manually.

Help please!