Fictional serial killer
Red John is a fictional character and the primary antagonist of the CBS crime drama "The Mentalist" for the first five seasons and in the first half of the sixth season. As a serial killer, he is believed to have begun his killing spree in 1988, and has, with his operatives and acolytes, killed more than 70 people in California, Nevada, and Mexico. Five years prior to the action of the first episode, he murdered the wife and daughter of Patrick Jane (Simon Baker), making Jane his dedicated nemesis.
In the season-three finale, "Strawberries and Cream (Part 2)", Jane encounters a man (Timothy Carter, played by Bradley Whitford) in a shopping mall who convinces him he is Red John and whom he subsequently kills. However, after this cliffhanger episode, over the course of the first several episodes of season four, Jane determines that Carter, although a psychopathic killer himself, was not Red John, but one of the killer's many operatives.
In season five's "Red Sails in the Sunset", Lorelei Martins (Emmanuelle Chriqui), a Red John operative, who goes astray after Jane convinces her that Red John murdered her sister, Miranda, accidentally reveals to Jane that he has already met Red John and shaken his hand. Jane compiles a list of men whose hands he has shaken and eventually narrows the list to seven names. Lorelei, however, is captured by Red John, whom she refused to name to Jane, breaking a promise she had made, and reads a pre-mortem message from Red John threatening to go back to killing “often" until Jane captures Red John or vice versa. In Lorelei's message from Red John, she names the seven men Jane had narrowed down his list to include, indicating that somehow Red John has gotten inside Jane's mind, although Red John doesn't deny being one of the seven men.
In the season 6 episode "Red John", the eponymous serial killer's identity is revealed to be Thomas McAllister, the sheriff of Napa County, portrayed by Xander Berkeley. After unmasking himself to Patrick Jane, McAllister discloses that he is the founder and overall leader of the secret organization known as the .
"TV Guide" included Red John in its 2013 list of "The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time".
Character profile.
Patrick Jane relentlessly pursues Red John, and ultimately in season 5 narrows his list of suspects to seven. The number of people in series who claim to have met "Red John" is limited. Although Jane learns that he has met Red John and shaken his hand at some point, he only discovers Red John's true identity midway through season 6.
Smiley face and other signatures.
As part of his criminal signature, Red John draws a smiley face on the wall with the blood of the victim—always clockwise (except when it was portrayed in skywriting in "Red John's Footsteps"), using the three fingers of his rubber-gloved right hand. Jane says in the pilot episode, "Red John thinks of himself as a showman, an artist. He has a strong sense of theater ... the first thing that anyone sees is the face on the wall. You see the face first and you know. You know what's happened and you feel dread. Then, and only then, do you see the body of the victim. Always in that order."
Jane uses this information to work out that an apparent Red John murder was a copycat crime. Red John has twice painted his victim's toenails with their own blood. Both were female. The first was Patrick Jane's wife, Angela; Red John wanted to punish Jane for saying derogatory things about him during a TV interview. Years later, knowing the case would be intercepted by the California Bureau of Investigation team and that the reminder of his wife's death would make Jane furious, Red John painted the toenails of a young girl, to lead Jane into a trap.
Red John's victims have been mostly female, with some exceptions, such as Jared Renfrew (Todd Stashwick) in the season 1 episode "Red John's Friends", a man Jane helped to be released from prison on the condition he would give Jane information on the whereabouts of Red John. Fearing Red John, the man escaped Jane's custody before giving any relevant information. Later that day, the man contacted Jane to explain that he would be of no further assistance, although this doesn't save Renfrew's life. Jane used background noises from the conversation as a starting point to find this man, but Red John got to him first, killing both Renfrew and the prostitute Renfrew had been with. In the season 2 episode "His Red Right Hand", it is revealed another man was killed when he interrupted his wife's murder at the hand of Red John. Jane believes this occurred early in Red John's career and that Red John made a "mistake" due to his inexperience. Jane believes Red John removed the body from the crime scene (something he had otherwise not done) to bury the mistake. In the season 2 finale "Red Sky in the Morning", Red John and Jane meet when Red John rescues Jane from kidnappers; however Red John wears a mask that obscures his face. Red John also kills the two kidnappers, one of whom was male, but leaves alive a boy who the kidnappers blackmailed into looking like a criminal. In the season 4 episode "Blinking Red Light", Red John kills James Panzer, a blogger and serial killer known as the San Joaquin Killer, after Panzer has been goaded by Jane into insulting Red John on television. Jane did this because he could think of no other way to protect society from Panzer.
In the season 4 premiere "Scarlet Ribbons", Patrick Jane says that Red John's victims are “nearly all women, late at night, in their homes. He wakes them first, because he likes to see the fear in their eyes. He likes to hear them beg for mercy as he cuts them open."
In the season 2 episode "The Scarlet Letter", Jane tells Senior Special Agent Sam Bosco (Terry Kinney) that "Red John doesn't make mistakes. He doesn't leave clues. If you have new evidence, it's because he wants you to have it. The question isn't 'What does it mean?'; it's 'Why did he give it to you?'".
Bruno Heller, show's creator, has said that Red John isn't a "pathetic loser who is hiding out in a basement somewhere", and that Jane is "not fighting the Green River Killer. He's fighting Moriarty." In addition, "Jane and the audience are coming to the gradual realization that this is a much larger task than it seemed at first. It's like those Amazon tribesmen who throw spears at passing airplanes, then come to realize those planes are the seeds of a much larger civilization that is coming down on them." Like Moriarty, Red John has a network of agents, willing to kill or to die for him. In a radio interview Heller has also stated: "Red John is really just a personification of death, I mean it's that simple. Patrick Jane is very much alive and is very much about being alive in the face of death. And Red John is the fate that awaits us all in the end."
Tyger Tyger Conspiracy: The Blake Association.
In season 2's finale episode "Red Sky in the Morning", a William Blake theme is introduced, when a person, who is believed at the time to be Red John, saves Patrick Jane from being killed under the direction of deranged slasher movie makers Ruth and Dylan. Jane is tied with saran wrap to a chair and, while he is immobilized, Red John recites the first verse of the William Blake poem "Tyger Tyger":
 ;poem ;Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
 ;/poem ;
In subsequent episodes (season 3), Jane wonders about this but doesn't tell anyone that Red John recited it to him. In episode 9 of season 3 (“Red Moon”), serial cop killer Todd Johnson is burned alive. While in the ICU, with Jane the only person present, Johnson whispers in his dying breath "Tyger! Tyger!". This makes Jane conclude that there is a connection between Johnson and Red John, but he doesn't tell anyone about this either.
During subsequent episodes, it becomes clear that Red John either has an inside man in the CBI or is himself working within the CBI. In season 3's "Red Queen", the new director of the CBI, Gale Bertram (Michael Gaston), also recites William Blake. This time it's from another poem, called "A Cradle Song". The two lines he recites are:
 ;poem ;
And when thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful night shall break
 ;/poem ;
Jane is not present at the time of the reciting, but it is quite out of character for Bertram to recite poetry, and the fact that it is a poem by the same author is probably more than a simple coincidence. Bertram is later revealed to be among Jane's final list of Red John suspects.
In the season 3 finale, Jane tells the entire team all that he knows and recites the first verse of "Tyger Tyger". Kimball Cho knows the poem very well and recites the first two verses of the second stanza:
 ;poem ;
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
 ;/poem ;
When discussing what the poem means, Cho says, "Well, God made the lamb, but he also made the tiger. You can't have light without darkness. Life without death." This is also the mindset Red John's accomplices follow to act on his orders. In Cho's interpretation, he refers to a third, and earlier poem by William Blake, called "The Lamb" to which "Tyger Tyger" is a response or a further musing on the different parts of creation and the reasons for them, as started in "The Lamb". Actually, Blake himself refers to "The Lamb" in "Tyger! Tyger!", in the last line of the fifth stanza: Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
In the season 6 episode "Red Listed", there is a revelation by Bob Kirkland (Kevin Corrigan) as to what "Tyger Tyger" means. Kirkland reveals to FBI agent Reede Smith (Drew Powell) that corrupt officials use the term "Tyger, Tyger" to cover up dirty work done under law enforcement. Smith pretends to know nothing about "Tyger Tyger" until he shoots Kirkland in the back six times when pretending to free him from a prison transfer, after which he tells the driver, who belongs to the same organization, "Tyger Tyger". The driver replies with the same phrase.
In the season 6 episode "The Red Tattoo", a woman named Kira Tinsley (Beth Riesgraf) is murdered by a man with a tattoo containing three dots – she reveals this to Jane in her final moments. Jane, believing that the man who killed Tinsley was Red John, gathers his five remaining Red John suspects into one location (in "Fire and Brimstone"), only to find that three of his suspects have the identical tattoo of three dots, revealing that they are all part of the "Tyger Tyger" group of corrupt officials.
In the season 6 episode "The Great Red Dragon", Smith decides to hand himself in after the same organization he is part of attempts to kill him, in the same way he killed Bob Kirkland. Once he is alone with Lisbon and Jane, he reveals that he is a member of The Blake Association (whose name is simultaneously first revealed), that they use the phrase "Tyger, Tyger" to identify fellow members, and that Red John is also a member of the Association. He explains how he came to join the Association after accidentally shooting a 12-year-old girl. The Association promised to clear his name and protect him if he agreed to join them and follow any instructions given to him, including murder.
Appearances, accomplices, and copycats.
Face-to-face.
At the start of the series, Red John was initially known as simply a serial killer who tortured and murdered mostly women, with at least eleven confirmed victims by the series' premiere. However, Red John's persona would become much more mysterious as any individual who would come close to disclosing any crucial information regarding the killer to Jane would wind up dead themselves, implying that Red John is far more than just an average serial killer and has deep connections throughout the