Of course Red John ist not Bertram. But it is Bertram we see approaching Jane in the church (next week's episode teaser) and he says "The game is over and I won". That's when it began to dawn on me - how would I proceed the story from here if I were a screenwriter?
Jane will shoot Bertram, even though he knows he's not Red John. Bertram was sent to die in the church by Red John. 

Jane will then be approached by the "real" Red John. He will be revealed, but... Jane is unable to kill him. Because RJ has a life insurance: The life of Lisbon. He will say to Jane, that the moment he will find his revenge, he will AGAIN lose everything that is important to him: Lisbon, who would be killed by one of his acolytes immediately in return. So he says "Let's call it a truce". 

Jane is forced to let Red John go - But the world will believe that Red John is dead (Bertram). It's just us (the audience) and Jane who know that this is not true.

The remainder of The Mentalist show will then be in a world where everyone thinks RJ is dead. Even Lisbon. The thrill will be: Will RJ return and start killing again? The producers could let him come back, maybe they'll decide upon how the ratings develop.

Ultimately the moral of the story is: You have to let the past go. There is no such thing as revenge. And RJ was right when he said "I'll show you clever". He know that Jane is unable to sacrifice the life of Lisbon.

Oh, and you want to know who RJ really is? No one on the list.. It doesn't really matter actually. It could be Mashburn or Bosco, somone who most of us didn't have on the radar.

Bruno Heller once said that "Red John ultimately is just a man - - -  I can guarantee that people will be
disappointed." Now the story underlines Gail Bertrum as Red John, but he is the biggest boss of the suspects. With that ending people would not be dissappointed. Sheriff McAllister on the other hand is just a sheriff of some distant area in California and he was only in the pilot episode and mentioned nowhere since before the end of season 5.

Bertrum tried to kill Jane, because he was the only one who knew that Bertram is dirty. Sure Reece Smith knew that too, but without Jane everyone would have believed him as Red John. And Red John telling Bertrum is dirty cop would not mean anything. But now that Jane is awake, Bertrum needs to run and it really does not matter if he kills a bartender or not. I think Jane also knows that Bertrum is not Red John, but he is armed and dangerous and on the loose. So it is good to warn people about Bertrum and at the same time the real Red John thinks that Jane is chasing the wrong person.

Partridge is as dead as he can be. How could he have faked his own death unless he had a twin brother who he killed. Red John put someone in Blake Association to remove the piece of skin from his shoulder to make people suspect that Partridge would have faked his own death and that Partridge would infact be Red John. The tattoo was removed but a cleaver guy could not say if the tattoo was removed or the skin was removed to make it look like the tattoo was removed.

McAllister placed that bomb and faked his own death. He was
identified from a DNA. It's fairly easy to leave a piece of own DNA to
the crime scene. As a member of Blake Association he had the power to do
things that looked like he was a big boss in CBI/FBI/wherever and that
same thing helped him to make things look like he had moles all over the
law enforcement. He is Red John.

According to the promo, McAllister is Red John.
According to some speculations Nick Nordella is going to play a younger McAllister (Though credited Young man on IMDb).
That's it, after six years, we finally have a name and a face. 

Is this the truth, or is it what CBS want to make you think? Be rational, you're a mentalist fan for Blake's sake.

I wanna know why the pigeons. Why Kirkland killed Jason Lennon. What happened to Kristina. How did Red John figure out the list.



Red John is either Ray Haffner or Brett Partridge. (Smith is not since episode 7 and so isn't Betram, Stiles was too old anyway, Kirkland is dead with 6-7 holes on his back. McAllister is a CBS puppet, used to mislead us on RJ identity).