An existing although unlikely possibility is that Red John is an outsider or fringe character we haven’t seen much of. Of the fringe characters, Brett Partridge is one who a lot of observers seem to think has potential. His name hasn’t even been mentioned on screen, and Jane characterized him as a ghoul and someone who likes his job too much.
Partridge would be a viable candidate, because he is into gore and is apparently a loner. Both of these would set up nicely for Red John. The main problem is that he would appear to have the least resources of all of the candidates, so I would put his chances as 1 out of 20.
As for an outsider, that is how everyone else would do it. It would be an easy plotline. Some corrupt and powerful outsider who has the resources to pay off whoever he wants and hide behind his money ultimately turns out to be Red John. Somehow, though, this just doesn’t sound right. Rich people usually aren’t serial killers because they can’t be bothered with all of the dirty work. We will put the chances of it being a rich outsider at 1 out of 10.
It could be a standard generic psychopath, too, but this also seems too easy for the creative staff of this series. The Mentalist is no ordinary series, and Red John is no ordinary killer. As we should soon find out, he was able to make the gun of the person Jane shot vanish in the middle of the chaos of his arrest. I would put the chances of a traditional psychopath being responsible at 1 out of 20.
We can probably deduce that Red John had a serious trauma in his or her life that made him or her start killing. We can also deduce that Red John is extremely intelligent, extremely motivated, and that he or she has a compulsive personality that would make that person stand out. The standard profile of the movie or TV serial killer who goes home to his parents’ basement and never talks to anyone doesn’t apply here.
I think it is someone who is in the cast as a regular or a recurring character. We will eventually find out, but when that happens probably depends on how long CBS keeps renewing them. The last episode of season 3 was perfect. If the show had ended, Red John was dead. Since they got renewed, Red John can be alive again. But a gambit like this one only works once, and Bruno Heller knows it.
Grab your popcorn and make sure you’re home on September 22. The ride is just beginning.
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Danny Ruskin? Who is that? It is Patrick Jane’s con man brother in law who appeared early last season for one episode. One of the main things to look for when trying to figure out who Red John will be is someone who is able to get the best of Patrick Jane, or at least a stalemate.
On the surface, Danny Ruskin couldn’t possibly be Red John, because Red John killed Ruskin’s sister Angela, who was Jane’s wife, and his niece Charlotte, who was Jane’s child. On the surface, he is angry at Jane for taunting Red John on TV and getting them killed.
However, he was also angry with Jane and his sister for leaving the carnival in the first place and taking his sister away. Carnies hate it when someone leaves, and the phrase “dead to me” is often used for those who leave. Once you leave, you don’t get to come back. Carnies also grow up as amoral grifters.
Danny Ruskin - Red John Suspect
Though it is quite a stretch, a case could be made for Danny becoming bitter and deciding that if he couldn’t have his sister, neither could Patrick. Or, he could have been trying to kill Patrick and botched the job. It would take a very compulsive and pathological person to do that, but isn’t that pretty much the definition of any serial killer?
Remember the last scene where “Red John” tells Jane how Angela smelled before her death? It was done with a car bomb, and he probably wasn’t right there. But a brother who grew up in a close-knit community that sees outsiders as “marks” would probably remember his sister’s perfume as a childhood memory. If the shopping mall “Red John” as indeed a fake, he had to get the information about Angela from somewhere. Where else but from someone who lived with Angela for the first years of his life?
One drawback would be that Red John is able to get powerful people working for him. One would think that it would have to be an important person in society, or a person with a lot of resources. But a genius con man would be able to get people to work for him under duress, or would be able to steal enough money to pay them well.
Chances of Danny Ruskin being Red John: 6 out of 10.
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Red John the ‘nickname’ of the serial killer and principal antagonist from the prime time television show The Mentalist. He (or she) has been linked to the murders of sixteen women and eight men as of the time of this writing. The victims include the television show’s protagonist’s (Patrick Jane) wife and daughter, a crime set five years before the television show’s pilot episode. It is unknown exactly how many victims Red John is guilty of or exactly when the killing spree began, but it is suspected to begin sometime around the year 1998. Click Here To See Latest Red John Theories
‘Red John‘ is known not to work alone, although the accomplices have a tendency to end up dead as soon as they become liabilities. The oldest known sidekick is Orville Tanner, the father of Dumar Tanner. The ‘famed’ psychic Patrick Jane was enlisted by the California police to try to get a profile of Red John to help track the killer down and bring the guilty party to justice, but Jane made the mistake of belittling the killer on television and paid for his ‘disrespect’ with the loss of his wife and daughter. His search for Red John has become his obsession, and he makes no claims that he will arrest the killer when discovered, as we can see in this conversation with Agent Teresa Lisbon:
Patrick Jane Declares Intentions Against Red John
Red John remains unseen, his face is always hidden in shadows, under hoods, hats or masks. In the first season finale Red John is seen escaping from an abondoned home that served as a prison to a young woman while Jane and Lisbon struggled against one of RJ’s accomplices. Red John also appeared in the second season finale dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt as he executed the film students Jane and Carter Peake in the presence of Patrick Jane, whom Red John ‘technically’ rescued.
During the season 3 finale, Patrick Jane has agent Teresa Lisbon redial the last number on one of Red John’s accomplices’ telephones and tell the person that answers that the accomplice is dead. A gentleman with a very plain, ordinary appearance (played by Bradley Whitford) reading a newspaper in the food court seated near Patrick answers his phone. Jane has Lisbon confirm the conversation, which matches what Jane saw the man say into his phone, so Patrick confronts him.
Initially, the man denies the situation, but drops some interesting hints that he really is indeed Red John. The man reveals details about the murders of Patrick’s wife and daughter, more specifically, the smell. This information spurs Jane into violent action and Patrick shoots the man with a gun that was hidden in his jacket pocket.
There has yet to be confirmation that the man was Red John, but since RJ is such an important element of the series which is set to go for seven seasons, it is most probably that the man was simply another accomplice, a tool by Red John possibly to test what Jane’s reaction would be to his revelation.
The identity of Red John remains a carefully guarded secret by the writers, and is completely unknown to the viewers, thus has become a topic of much debate. Red John is nearly always referred to as a “he” but there has yet been no evidence completely disproving that Red John could be a woman that simply uses many male accomplices.
All of Red John’s known accomplices refer to the killer as a ‘him’ and to this point none have given any appearance of lying about that fact, or to have expressed even the slightest doubt. The few moments where the audience has been shown what is believed to be Red John have been definitely given a masculine tone. All theories are plausible at this point, however, since very little conclusive evidence currently exists.
We have done exhaustive analyses of this elsewhere on the site, but the mystery is still as strong as it has been in at any time during the series. Writers of screenplays usually like to follow the elements of classical literature. These and some newer elements have been combined into a sort of de facto “rulebook” for writing. One of the most important elements is “leading the reader.”
In any creative writing class, writers are taught that everything that happens in a story must have precedent that leads the reader to a logical conclusion. In other words, everything has to make sense. At the end of pretty much any good murder mystery, one can go back and find clues that were well-hidden, but definitely there.
It is “against the rules” for a writer to bring something in from “left field.” There is even a name for it: Deus ex machina, or “God out of the machine.” This was introduced in Horace’s Ars Poetica, and is loosely taught as bringing in a solution to a problem that is totally outside of what has previously appeared in the story. This is great for Creative Writing 101, but what does it mean to us concerning Red John?
It means that, in all likelihood, the groundwork and clues are already present in previous episodes, or the clues will appear before Red John’s identity is revealed. In other words, we have already seen Red John, and there are plenty of clues that will all fit together in retrospect.
For better or worse, though, Heller has left so many clues that there is a body of “evidence” for just about anyone in the series being Red John. It would take a Red John clues spreadsheet covering where everyone was at the exact time of every Red John murder, thus eliminating suspects, to get a closer idea of who he really is.
How serious is Bruno Heller when he compares Red John to Moriarity?
There is a sub-question here: is Heller comparing Red John to the literary description of Moriarity or the versions of Moriarity that weren’t in Doyle’s original writings? Though Doyle only had Moriarity appear in one book, his “final one,” Moriarity is ubiquitous in all of the TV shows, movies, and cartoons based upon the Holmes series.
There is one thing common to all versions of Moriarity, though: he is always a step ahead of Holmes, but Holmes outsmarts him in the end. Another thing they all have in common is that they aren’t anyone already in Holmes’ life.
So, it comes down to this: if Heller is serious about Red John being Patrick Jane’s Moriarity, then he won’t be anyone who has appeared as a character so far.
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