OK. I HAVE FOUND A POTENTIAL FLAW THAT SOMEONE AT APPLE MIGHT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT.
I was able to locate this file, in my finder, by entering the following command (to see hidden files)
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
and then restarting terminal.
THEN I was able to see the directory that contained the images I wanted to delete. This is the crazy part though. I went into the folder "03" which now appeared in the screenshot as above. In this folder I found multiple subfolders that all had images that I thought I had deleted, and did not want any of the folders. That's not the weird part though. I did not want to delete the folder, just in case it messed anything up, so I deleted a single image. from one of the sub folders and it instantly deleted everything!
the whole "03" folder dissapeared. Just from dragging a photo contained in a subfolder in it. I have confirmed that it is gone through terminal. I was stupid and did not see if it went to the system trash before I emptied it... I'm not one of those crazy conspiracy theorists who thinks apple is watching me 😁, I realize this is probably a bug, but it's a scary bug.
Now here is what I want to know. Will someone tell me how I can search for ALL FILES, EVERYTHING, through finder? I now have hidden files shown, but I cannot search them. I want to see a finder page with EVERY photo on my mac. If I search "all images" it shows 200 images, I know there are thousands of images on this mac. I want to see them all. I use my camera as a makeshift scanner for confidential documents and I want to make sure they are not lingering like these other photos were. Please tell me how to do this? in the last version of OSX I used, I just had to click "search system files" or somthing along those lines...
anyways my problem is half-solved, as now I know at least how to delete the photos once I know they are there. Now I just want to know how to find if they are there! 🙂