I want to introduce some new thoughts. I suspect Thomas McAllister, Reede Smith or Gale Bertram.
I think it is one of them because "the mentalist" is a tv-series ;).
The idea of the show is to mislead the viewer, surprise him and point out clues which lead to another misleading hints.
I assume that all hints to RJ from the show are true, and no false hints are set. So let's look at the other 4 other subjects
Brett Partridge: He is way to creepy. Every fan who watched the show suspected him that he have done evil stuff from the first second, wheather in the RJ context or not. He is way to obvious. Furthermore RJ has to be older. He worked for Visualize 20 years ago at a farm, thus has to be between 20 and 30 at this time, thus 40 to 50 now. Perhaps older. So, Partidge is out.
Bret Stiles
and Ray Haffner are old enough and worked for the cult organisation "Visualize". The "Visualize" connection would be the best bet for a real investigator. Why is Jane not going to "Visualize", makes some crazy Jane stuff to break in and tries to find membership lists of the time? Or members which started the farm, or brought stuff to the farm? Or made the accounting for the farm? Why not asking the tax office for data from the time from this city? Or tries to ask questions to people from the city? Why is Bruno Hellers strory not following this excellent clue?
I guess because Mr. Heller wants us to follow this clue "on our own". We should suspect Ray or Bret just because of this hint. So: to obvious.
Bob Kirkland: too abvious. He already broke into Janes flat to find the evidence against RJ. RJ knows the list of 7. So, a real investigtor would ask: where does RJ get this information which only Jane can know and he wrote down once? And the first bet would be the guy who broke into the appartment and stole the stuff ;). Furthermore, he is now the main investigator of the RJ case. It would be ironic to be him RJ. So, a good suspect, thus a bad suspect.
Why this three?
Gale Bertram: We already suspected him. It's a classic mentalist-show move to have a suspect, find clues that leads us away from this person, but at last, he's the killer. So, this would follow this figure Heller already used "against" the viewer of the show. Furthermore, Bertram is old enough.
Thomas McAllister: in the first moment the list of 7 was revealed I thought of ... who the fuck is this? I didn't remember him at all. Furthermore he has nothing to do with the CBI and the main characters. He is not the first subject, thus he is mine
Reede Smith: Well, he's the chubby guy and everyone thinks: "no, not the chubby kid" ;). Remember the episode where the "retarded" guy set fire to kill the killers of his friend. Same figure in story telling.
Basically, the idea of this theory is to find the guys who are the most un-obvious and trying to understand what an author of the show is thinking. The authors want us to be surprised, to be mislead. So, find the guys you are not suspecting. And you have your killer ;).
