Deleted Items always go to the Deleted Items folder. If you've deleted it
from there, it is gone.

Actually, there is a way to retrieve the list; open up an old email sent to
the dl and cut and paste the email addresses into a text file on the
clipboard.  Copy the contents of the text file, return to Outlook, open a new
distribution list, click on “select members” and in the pop-up box labeled
“select members” go to the “members” box, get the cursor in the empty box to
the right of that, and hit ctrl V.  That pastes in all the new contacts form
the text file.  Then hit “ok”, which will put all the names into the
distribution list, and hit Save and close (after making sure you give the
distribution list a name you will remember!)

Believe it or not, this is a lot faster than trying to re-create a dl from
scratch

I posted something on this topic a little while ago.  If you can't see the
deleted list in your Deleted Items, click on Go, Folder List and check that
version of Deleted Items.  That's where I found my deleted list.  I don't
know why there is a difference but there seems to be one.