It seems to be a problem with your mail server(not the websites mail server but the one used by thunderbird),not processing attachments correctly. Also thats rather strange the way the [img] tag is not being displayed correctly....
Try this fix I whipped up:
vbms_read.php
Line 85ish
PHP Code:
$message['message'] = convert_url_to_bbcode($message['message']);
Replace it with
PHP Code:
require_once(DIR . "/includes/functions_wysiwyg.php")
$message['message'] = convert_wysiwyg_html_to_bbcode($message['message']);
That should convert any <img> tags in the message into correct [img] tags.
Oh and that empty slot is for when a message does have an attachment, a small paperclip image will be there.