Red John - The Face and Other Signatures

The Face and Other Signatures

As part of his criminal signature, Red John draws a smiley face on the wall with the blood of the victim—always clockwise (except when it was portrayed in skywriting in "Red John's Footsteps"), using the three fingers of his rubber-gloved right hand. Patrick Jane, the show's protagonist, says in the pilot episode, "Red John thinks of himself as a showman; an artist. He has a strong sense of theater ... the first thing that anyone sees is the face on the wall. You see the face first and you know. You know what's happened and you feel dread. Then, and only then do you see the body of the victim. Always in that order."

Jane uses this information to work out that an apparent Red John murder was a copycat crime. Red John has twice painted his victim's toenails with their own blood. Both were female. The first was Patrick Jane's wife, Angela, to strike a personal blow against Jane for derogatory comments Jane made on television about Red John. Years later, knowing the case would be intercepted by the California Bureau of Investigation team and that the reminder of his wife's death would make Jane furious, Red John painted the toenails of a young girl, to lead Jane into a trap.

Red John's victims have been mostly female, with some exceptions, such as Jared Renfrew (Todd Stashwick) in the season 1 episode "Red John's Friends", a man Jane helped to be released from prison on the condition he would give Jane information on the whereabouts of Red John. Fearing Red John, the man escaped Jane's custody before giving any relevant information. Later that day, the man contacted Jane to explain that he would be of no further assistance, although this doesn't save Renfrew's life. Jane used background noises from the conversation as a starting point to find this man, but Red John got to him first, killing both Renfrew and the prostitute Renfrew had been with. In the Season 2 episode "His Red Right Hand", it is revealed another man was killed when he interrupted his wife's murder at the hand of Red John. Jane believes this occurred early in Red John's career and that Red John made a "mistake" due to his inexperience. Jane believes Red John removed the body from the crime scene (something he had otherwise not done) to bury the mistake. In the Season 2 finale, Red John and Jane meet when Red John rescues Jane from kidnappers; however Red John wears a mask which obscures his face. Red John recites part of the poem The Tyger by William Blake to Jane, who is bound in a chair. In the season 4 episode "Blinking Red Light", Red John kills James Panzer, a blogger and serial killer known as the San Joaquin killer, after Panzer has been goaded by Jane into insulting Red John on television. Jane did this because he could think of no other way to protect society from Panzer.

In Season 4 premiere, Patrick Jane says that Red John's victims are "nearly all women, late at night, in their homes. He wakes them first, because he likes to see the fear in their eyes. He likes to hear them beg for mercy as he cuts them open."

In the episode "The Scarlet Letter" (season 2, episode 2), Patrick also says to Senior Special Agent Sam Bosco that "Red John doesn't make mistakes. He doesn't leave clues. If you have new evidence, it's because he wants you to have it. The question isn't 'What does it mean?'; it's 'Why did he give it to you?'"

Bruno Heller, show's creator, has said that Red John isn't a "pathetic loser who is hiding out in a basement somewhere", and that Jane is "not fighting the Green River Killer. He's fighting Moriarty." In addition, "Jane and the audience are coming to the gradual realization that this is a much larger task than it seemed at first. It's like those Amazon tribesmen who throw spears at passing airplanes, then come to realize those planes are the seeds of a much larger civilization that is coming down on them." Like Moriarty, Red John has a network of agents, willing to kill or to die for him. In a radio interview Heller has also stated: "Red John is really just a personification of death, I mean it's that simple. Patrick Jane is very much alive and is very much about being alive in the face of death. And Red John is the fate that awaits us all in the end."