A good theory must have answers to the open questions of the Mentalist:
- why did Bob Kirkland kill the man in the hospital, who knew about Red John, when he was hunting Red John himself?
- how could Red John know about the seven suspects, two months before PJ?
- why did Partridge have to die?

I think the solution to the Red John Puzzle will be tricky, because the whole show is about tricks. So it is not just about reducing the list of seven down to one because of a red tatoo. There has to be a special trick from one side and an even better trick from the other side, showing that this is a fight between two masterminds.

So I was looking for a tricky solution.

Here is my theory:
Bob Kirkland is Red John, so its is obvious, why he killed the man in the hospital. Red John/Robert Kirkland gets the information from Lorelei Martins, that Patrick Jane knows about the handshake. In that moment he understood, that he is in trouble, and he decided to create a masterplan: to make Patrick believe, that he is not Red John, let Patrick reduce the list to only one name, so that Patrick will kill the last name on the list, believing he must be Red John. Clever. First he let Lorelei Martins speek all possible names on video, that PJ could possibly may have shaken hands with, maybe dozens or hundreds of names, for further usage. Two months later, he broke in Patrick Janes room, as seen in TV. With the informations from Patricks wall, he learned two things: Patrick has a list of seven names and Patrick has also created a fake list. He makes use of both. First, with the seven names he created the video. He had a lot of names spoken by Lorelei on tape, including this seven names from the list, so he fabricated the video out of this. Of course you could see the manipulation in the video, if if would be possible to look at the video, while Lorelei ist speaking the names. But you can´t. Why? When you look very carefully at the video, you can see, that Red John has used a manipulation trick, to shift your focus away from the video to the pictures (saying something like: "I give you time to look on your pictures"), exactly at the time, when Lorelei starts with the names. So the TV watcher (and Patrick and Teresa also) cannot see the manipulation in the video. Clever.

Next, Bob Kirkland makes use of Patricks fake list to make Patrick believe, that he is not Red John. How? He argues, that he is hunting Red John himself, proving that by torturing and killing people from the fake list. Very clever.
Next, he has to fake his own death, otherwise he has to go to prison. How?
From his job he knew about an organization inside police, that can provide what he wants - faking his death, and that partridge has something to do with it. So he tortured Partridge and got the informations about the inside organization he needed, including that Reed Smith is a member. So he made contact with Reed Smith and tells him, that he already knew about the organization. Not seen on TV was the part, where Kirkland and Smith made the fake-kill-deal. The killing of Kirkland was just a show - for the security man (and the TV watcher). First Smith gave the informations to Kirkland about how to escape, then he makes a fake-kill. How do I know? When you look in 6x04 at 42:15, you see and hear, that Reed Smith shoots seven times in Kirklands back. But later in 6x05 at 26:41 we hear Rigsby saying: "Kirkland is shot six times in the back." Maybe a clue from Heller to the audience. For the fake-kill they used a safety jacket, let Bob Kirkland escape and for the police to find, they replaced Bob Kirklands body with the dead body of his twin brother Michael. Very clever.