I would first like to say thank you to the writers of the show for eliminating partridge as a suspect in the very first season six episode...god damn all u idiots who chose to go the route of red herring and assume the most obvious candidate for red john was in fact the real mccoy really dont understand the show at all.......
Anyways before season six started i was about80pct sure gale bertram was our man for many reasons that i will not delve in to right now,, due to lack of time and space for the amount of evidence i have acquired throughout the past 3 seasons...
However i will explain why 3 of the other candidates just dont fit the profile.
Brett stiles: as much as i would love the drama and excitement to have him as red john he is FAR too old to be him and there is no way he was working at a farm that the cult that he leads owns...Thats would be like Jerry Jones cleaning the cowboys jockstraps after a game....HEs way to high up in visualize to have worked at elliston farm and paint the rj smiley face on the barn.
Reede Smith: Too fat and short to be red john,,,not basing this off of Rosalinds harker/ Sophie Millers description of RJ but rather after the scene from the season two finale Red sky in the morning where RJ saves janes life and is scene in a disguise....NO way this could have been smith,,, sure he could have lost weight but RJ looked atleast 3 or 4 inches taller than smith in that scene.
Thomas McCalister: I am actualy pretty offfended that he was even put into the suspect pool for RJ after appearing in just the second episode of the series.. But in any event.. the way Jane beat him at Rock paper scissors about one hundred times would reveal his intelligence to be far less supeiror than Janes, which we know is defintly not the case with Red John
So after we elimate partridge due to his death. that leaves it with three people...Bertram, Kirkland and Hafner
Kirkland is very plausible to be red john due to his suspicious behavior, but i also feel that like smith, he is too short to be Red John, however, i feel very strongly that he may be one of his accomplices just because i cant fathom explantions to his suspicious behaviors...But i cant completely rule him out just due to his height either,, i consider him to be the 3rd most likely suspect.
Hafner is my dark horse, and since season 6 has started i have begun to even consider him more plausible than bertram,, his suceess in wire taps/survelance could easily explain how he gathered the knowledge of janes suspect list,, and his mysteriious love for lisbon would also explain why red john spared her in the episode two weeks ago...the more i think about him the more i feel like hes the guy..
Bertram is still the main suspect in my mind though,, his blatanly suspicious behavior in the first two episodes of season six actually are making me worry though,, becuase in this show it never seems to be the obvious candidate,,,I just like him because of his actions in the season three finale, his physical characteritiscs, his abilty to easily keep track of jane and lisbon, the blake poem recital, and his tea drinking
I firmly belive tho that it is either bertram, hafner or kirkland in that order.