Who is Red John?

Theories of Scarlett545 (1)

Jane planted that bomb and used it to fake Reed and Bertram's deaths (or possible they both actually die because Jane knows that Bertram killed Todd Johnson and Reed killed Kirkland).  In the preview for The Great Red Dragon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0WFM9kR0cw), Rigsby says that RJ brought in the bomb but that is clearly a lie Jane fed to the team because Jane did not reveal the location of the meeting until the last possible moment which means that RJ wouldn't have had enough time to set up a bomb.  When Rigsby is speaking, we see pictures of Haffner, Stiles, and McCallister on a board in the background.  They are the surviving suspects from the bomb and Lisbon is going to assume that one of them is RJ.  Because only one of those three has a tattoo, it will become obvious that it was the tiger tiger group that killed the private investigator and not RJ.  I'm guessing that McCallister will crack and spill all the tiger tiger secrets with Jane and the team, tiger tiger will then make an attempt to kill off the team to keep the secret.  Stiles will go on the run or be arrested by the FBI and do something that will disqualify him as RJ.  That will leave only Haffner and everyone is going to think that Haffner is RJ.  Lisbon, the team, Jane, and swat will all turn up at Haffner's house and he'll either escape or be arrested by Lisbon.  The key thing here is that the list of suspects was fake and Haffner is not RJ.  Jane will have successfully framed a fake RJ and distracted Lisbon and the team completely.  My guess is that Lisbon will be questioning Haffner for the first half of Red John 6x08 episode and only then realize it was all Jane's set up.  As soon as Lisbon is distracted, Jane is going to visit the two or three name that he's narrowed down from the names in his notebook.  I'm guessing that these names will be Walter Mashburn, Jason Cooper, and Dean Harken.  Jane will find someway of investigating Cooper under the guise of questioning him about Haffner since they're both Visualize.  Maybe he'll break into Dean Harken's house and search around.  Jane might go question Mashburn's one-time fiance Marie Jarret.  Anyway no matter how Jane conducts this solo investigation, I'm convinced that Walter Mashburn will be revealed as RJ at the end.  

Consider the phobia clue we were given.  The only suspect with a known phobia, before the writers crammed imagined phobias from the seven suspects down our throats, was Mashburn.  Jane called him on his dirt phobia in Redline.  This is the only mentioned phobia that would make sense for RJ because RJ is very very good at not leaving any evidence behind.  There is more evidence pointing toward Mashburn than there is for any other suspect but none of that matters if you've accepted the list of seven suspects as real.  Those seven suspects are boring, dull, and unimaginative characters.  Each one can be disqualified by various accepted facts about RJ.  All of them dislike Jane while we know that RJ desperately wants Jane's friendship.  A simple elimination of suspects goes against all of Jane's brilliant plans that have surprising twists that catch the killer.  When Jane faked his breakdown in the season 4 final, the audience didn't know until Jane told Lisbon.  Similarly as long as Lisbon is in the dark, people are going to assume that the list is real.  The best evidence against the list is that it is full of unpopular suspects.  Why show us all the popular suspects (Brett Partridge, Ellis Mars, Dean Harken, Walter Mashburn, Jason Cooper, Osvaldo Ardiles, Virgil Minelli, etc) in Jane's notebook episodes before the seven suspects list came out with dull suspects that no one was rooting for previously?  The only reason that list was accepted as real was the presence of Brett Partridge.  If Partridge hadn't been included, the list would've never held up.  But Partridge is dead and all those Partridge fans are forced to come up with ridiculous ways of Partridge faking his own death because they accepted the list as real because Partridge was on it but are sensible enough to realize that none of the other six suspects can be RJ.  And to all those Partridge fans, RJ would never risk faking his death like that because it would be far too risky with too many different variables that might reveal he was still alive.  Besides RJ already faked his death once in the third season finale so doing it again would be poor writing on the writers' part.

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