Patrick Jane is a consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation. He uses his keen powers of observation, his brilliant mind and his flair for mischief to solve crimes. Despite his lack of boundaries and disregard for protocol, he is valued because his tricks, ruses and mindgames close cases. His motivation in joining the CBI is to find Red John.

Jane previously worked as a psychic and became a minor celebrity. In a TV interview, Jane taunted Red John, a serial killer, saying: "He's an ugly, tormented little man, a lonely soul, sad, very sad." This prompted Red John to murder Jane's wife, Angela Ruskin Jane, and daughter, Charlotte Anne Jane. Ever since, Jane's reason has been to avenge his family by killing Red John. Nine years after the deaths of his wife and daughter, he has only just begun to make significant advancements in this regard.  

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Life As a Psychic 1.2 Working With the CBI 1.2.1 Confrontation with "Red John" 2 Personality 3 Known Kills 4 Relationships   4.1 Teresa Lisbon 5 Trivia

BiographyEdit

In the mid-1980s, when Patrick Jane was 16, he worked in a carnival as a psychic boy wonder, with his father Alex who MC-d the sideshow. Patrick had what his father called "x-ray eyes," his amazing skills of observation, deduction and induction. He had a rough existence with his father, the only adult in his life, whose treatment and use of him was tantamount to child abuse. When Patrick refused to scam a dying girl and her grandmother, his father threatened him and forced him to do it. Jane later said that he never went to a high school, presumably due to the nomadic carny life.

In Red John's Rules, Sean Barlow, another psychic and former Alex's friend, said that his grandfather and Alex's grandfather came together from Ireland to the US. Barlow, that affirm who himself is a real clairvoyant, said also that Alex was a "wicked man", that abused the faith of people, knowing that he and his family hasn't the powers.

Alex exploited Patrick for his skills, since he was very young, and for a time, little Jane was brought, from a interview of California social assistance, into a center for child's protection.

Alex had a wedding ring on his hand, but Jane did not mention his mother at the circus, then probably, she died or she abandoned them.

Also while working at the carnival, Patrick met his wife-to-be Angela, whose family was part of the same carnival. They ran away together to escape the carny lifestyle, which her family viewed as a betrayal and which was likely also the cause of Jane's estrangement with his father.  Angela's brother, Danny Ruskin is a con-man who came back into Patrick's life in Cackle-bladder Blood.     

Life As a PsychicEdit

Bits of his past have been revealed through flashbacks and dialogue. In several flashbacks, Jane is shown taking part in a television show where he appears to contact the dead relatives of audience members. When questioned about the assistance he was giving the police in their pursuit of the serial killer, Red John, Jane called the killer "ugly and sad." This established Jane as a man confident in his abilities, but not mindful of the

consequences. When Jane returned home from the show, he discovered that his wife, Angela Ruskin Jane, and daughter, Charlotte Anne Jane (names revealed in the third-season episode Cackle-bladder Blood), had been murdered by Red John who was angry at being mocked.  This burdened Jane with enormous guilt.

As a result of his culpability in the killings, Jane had a mental breakdown. Jane admitted to Lisbon that he spent time in a locked facility in the episode, Red Brick and Ivy. In the 100th episode Red Dawn, it was revealed that Jane was in the asylum for six months. When he was released, he figured out a way to keep his breakdown out of his file, as he was deeply ashamed of it. It is also revealed that Minelli was aware of Jane's breakdown from the start but didn't tell Lisbon.

In the episode, Redemption, Special Agent Samuel Bosco discusses the murder of Jane's family and quotes from the case file that someone testified that AngeIa begged him to get out of the psychic game. 

Despite Jane's history as a psychic and con-man, he has a strong moral core. He is not a relativist - he has a firm idea of what's right and what's wrong.  

Working With the CBIEdit

One year after his wife and daughter were killed, Jane approached the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI)  to get information about the Red John case but quickly became involved in a case. At Lisbon's request, using his skills, he helped the stymied team catch the murderer. Patrick recovered his self-respect when he saw that the mentalist skills that had resulted in the death of his family could be used for good. Impressed, Minelli offered him a position as a consultant. (For more information about his first day working with the CBI - Red Dawn). Although in "Red Brick and Ivy," Patrick told Lisbon that Dr. Sophie Miller had given him his life back, by involving him in the murder case, Lisbon played just as big a role.

Jane quickly gained a reputation for his cocky, charming, sometimes annoying personality and inspired respect for his dazzling ability to solve crimes.  He has used this talent and the threat of witholding it, to manipulate Gale Bertram, director of the CBI.  A dark side emerges when it comes to Red John.  Jane has declared, on more than one occasion, that catching and killing "Red John" is the single most important thing to him, even above his freedom or his life.

Reckless as he often seems to be, Jane's actions reveal crucial details in murder investigations. Although Patrick keeps up his cheeky facade, it is obvious that he misses his wife and daughter terribly. However, he will not discuss them, and his guilt and pain have led to sleep issues. He is uncomfortable with physical contact. He has a special connection with children. Jane is often anonymously generous, especially to the victims of crimes --  paying for a liver transplant for the elderly mother of a casino worker, or anonymously donating hundreds of thousands worth of jewelery and cash to charity.

Jane has a propensity to play mind games and push people's buttons (whether a suspect or just someone he doesn't like). He is shown to be wary of and to avoid all types of physical confrontation and to have a particular aversion to firearms. A notable exception to this occurred at the end of the first season when Jane grabbed a shotgun and killed a police officer who was working for Red John in order to save Lisbon -- then threw the weapon away as if it was red hot. After he manipulates the newest Supervising Agent Luther Wainwright in order to capture a suspect, Agent Wainwright, who has a degree in forensic psychology, tells him he has inferred from their interactions that Jane is a clinical psychopath.

Regarding Jane's "psychic" abilities: After the death of his family, Jane openly admits that he was a fraud, but his seemingly miraculous knowledge of people causes many to doubt this. Jane is extremely observant and logical, with insights into human nature that baffle others, often working out "whodunnit" early in the program, but not revealing who it is until the end. When a supervisor dismisses one of Jane's hunches as ridiculous, team leader Teresa Lisbon says "It's a Jane hunch, sir. It's the reason we keep him around." Over the course of the series, Jane has more and more taken the lead in investigations. The rest of the team may roll their eyes at his antics but they fall into line behind him and generally do the grunt work on any case. Lisbon immediately asks for his take on any crime and he often goes off on his own to solve cases.

Confrontation with "Red John"Edit

After Red John's accomplice Craig O'Laughlin is killed while trying to kill Hightower in her mountain cabin hideout, Jane (who is in a food court in a Sacramento mall) has Lisbon use the redial on O'Laughlin's phone and tell whomever answers that O'Laughlin is dead. An average looking gentleman (played by Bradley Whitford) sitting in the food court near Jane answers his phone. Jane, seeing this, has Lisbon tell him what the person she called said to her.

It's the same thing that the man in the food court said, so Jane confronts him. The man first denies it, but moments later idenitfies himself as Red John. Jane, however, is still skeptical, and confronts the man again as he tries to leave, only for him to reveal to Jane details of the murders of his wife and daughter, specifically, what they smelled like. This sends Jane over the edge, and he calls after the man, then guns him down with a weapon hidden in his coat pocket. Jane then sits down and calmly sips tea while waiting to be arrested, apparently satisfied that this man was indeed Red John. However in subsequent episodes it appears that the man that Jane had killed was not Red John, but a child abductor named Timothy Carter, another one of Red John's accomplices. 

PersonalityEdit

Patrick Jane has a playful and cocky personality and a tendency to ignore authority, often using unorthodox methods which are met with disapproval by his coworkers. Jane is considered to be the finest detective in California, on par with Sherlock Holmes. He is capable of amazing feats of

observation and induction and although he says he isn't psychic, some people maintain that he must be.  Jane is not afraid of taunting others although after the deaths of his wife and daughter he is more cautious and knows that his actions can have terrible consequences.

Although he generally exhibits a happy demeanour, Jane suffers enormous guilt over the deaths of his wife and daughter as well as a ferocious determination to kill Red John, the serial killer that murdered them. After Sam Bosco and his CBI team is murdered by Red John's minion Rebecca, she tells Jane that the slaughter was committed to give the case back to Jane because Red John "knows it will make Jane happy". This "cause and effect explanation" generates more guilt in Jane.

Despite his grudge against Red John, Jane is reluctant to wield weapons except in extreme circumstances; notably when he saved Lisbon using a gun against a man who might have given him information about Red John.  When he met the man who he believed was Red John, Jane shot him to avenge his dead family.

Jane is a master manipulator, a trait also possessed by his enemy Red John. He's obsessed with Red John and, it has become apparent, Red John is obsessed with him. As Brett Stiles put it, "It's a kind of love, Patrick." Jane forms few personal attachments for fear of losing more loved ones. There is a close friendship and a hinted-at romantic attraction between him and Lisbon. Jane is aware that his attachment to Lisbon could make her a target for Red John.

Red John felt slandered when Jane called him sad, ugly, lonely and tormented. This would make a case for him being anything but. His charisma, intelligence, plus three mistresses that we know of, support this. Since Lorelei made a comparison between Red John and Jane (who is beautiful, brilliant, charming -- and only sad, lonely and tormented since Red John made him that way), it would stand to reason that Red John could hold a candle to Jane. Jane has compiled a notebook of everyone he knows believing Red John to be among them.

When Brett Stiles calls Red John's preoccupation with Patrick "a kind of love," he hits the nail on the head.   No one gives Red John more attention than Patrick.  Red John is a showman; he's performing.  And he delights in having so discerning an audience.  The brilliant Patrick Jane, whose life is devoted to deciphering his every move.  His life would be diminished without Jane.

While some have expressed discomfort with a thorough exploration of a psychosexual component to Red John's obsession with Jane, no analysis of the killer would be complete without it.  Many Wikia readers have expressed interest in such an analysis.  What follows is an evaluation of Red John from a clinical psychologist.  Over the course of the series,  dialogue like "It's a kind of love," and "he wanted you badly," as well as actions like saving Patrick's life, then stroking his shoulder and chest lovingly and, in the Crimson Hat, releasing him alive despite Patrick's having duped him, (many people have been killed for less) all point to a deep attraction.  Rebecca, Bosco's assistant and Loralei, Red John's mistress have told Jane that he and Red John are very much alike.  Psychotherapists theorize that  "there's a desire to merge here."  Red John could have had Loralei bail Patrick out of jail, take him for a drink and then drop the bomb about who sent her and why.  The further step of having her sleep with him was, as therapists say, diagnostic.  There's a strong sexual component here.   Not necessarily conscious and not necessarily anything he would act on.  By proxy, through Loralei, Red John now has the most intimate knowledge of Patrick.   And the cherry on the sundae for Red John, is that he got that knowledge without Patrick's consent.  Carnal knowledge without consent.  The law has a word for that.

This attraction is one-sided.  Jane's interest in Red John is about revenge and justice.  But Patrick is brilliant, well-read (Carl Jung) and possessed of deep insight into the human psyche.  When he talks about Red John "getting his heart's desire" in recruiting him,  he shows he has the psychological astuteness to understand what's going on.

Known KillsEdit

• Dumar Tanner (Shot once in the stomach to save Lisbon)
• Timothy Carter (Shot several times in the stomach thinking he was Red John)
• James Panzer (Enticed Red John to murder Panzer by having Panzer degrade him on Television)

Relationships  Edit

Teresa LisbonEdit

Jane and Lisbon first met when he came to the CBI to get information about the Red John case, but he quickly got involved in another case and proved that his mentalist skills could be useful. Minelli, impressed by Jane's skills, offered him a job as a consultant. That's how he found his way into Lisbon's team. 

Over the years, the two of them developed a deep friendship and strong feelings for each other. Lisbon is without a doubt the closest person in Jane's life and even though he wouldn't mind getting himself killed if that meant catching Red John, he would always choose Lisbon over Red John, as proven in the season 1 finale, when in order to save Lisbon's life, Jane shoots the only person that could've led him to Red John. Lisbon is the only person that Jane completely trusts and also the only one Jane admitted to that the man he shot in the season 3 finale was not Red John. Jane cares deeply about her, exhibited only when she's in danger, for example when she gets shot by O'Laughlin in season 3. 

Over the years, Jane has developed romantic feelings towards her, which he admits in the season 4 finale. Seconds before fake-shooting her, he hugs her and tells her that he loves her. Later, when she asks him about it, he claims not to remember his words.

Jane knows that his feelings for Lisbon could make her a possible target for Red John. He once stated that whenever someone gets close to him, bad things happen. Since Lisbon is the person Jane cares about the most, it is possible that Red John might go after her at some point.

In the first episode of season 5, Red John accomplice Lorelei Martins teases Jane, saying that he's "a little bit in love with Lisbon" and that he only does this job to be close to her. Jane doesn't deny this but instead says that he does it to pass the time.

In the season 5 episode "Devil's Cherry" Jane hallucinates his dead daughter Charlotte after drinking belladonna tea. She teases him a lot about her and makes it obvious that she wants them to be together. Since Charlotte and everything she says is made up by Jane's mind, it's likely that she was just his way of handling the feelings he has for Lisbon.

TriviaEdit

• Bruno Heller, creator of The Mentalist, has admitted that there is chemistry between Jane and Lisbon, and that (a romantic relationship) is a small but possible way to take the show.
• Patrick Jane uses a Motorola Razr2 cell phone and drives a baby blue Citroën DS 21.
• Patrick is an avid tea drinker.  He loves eggs.  If food is around, he helps himself.  
• He's an excellent poker player, at one point he uses this skill to raise bail money.
• He always wears a well-cut three-piece suit and button-down shirt with no tie.  He wears the same beaten up brown shoes.  
• Although Jane has no formal education, he is well-read, culturally literate and has an appreciation of art, theater, wine and music, especially opera and classical.
• He is an atheist. 
• He seems to have transcended his carny roots and appears, from his bearing, speech and sensibilities, to be several rungs in social class above Lisbon and Cho and more than several above Rigsby and Van Pelt.
• He can carry a tune ("Ladies In Red"), dance ("Code Red," "Red All Over," "Rose-Colored Glasses") and cook ("Red Sauce.")
• He loves puzzles and games and riddles.  He can perform many sleight of hand tricks.
• He has an affinity for children.  In several episodes, screaming babies stop crying when he holds them or start crying when he stops. 
• He has shown a childlike appreciation of tractors, motorcycles, horses and remote control airplanes.  He makes origami frogs and paper airplanes.
• He's an expert hypnotist.  In "Russet Potatoes" he alludes to having hypnotized Minelli to stop smoking.  He has hypnotized many suspects and witnesses though Lisbon frowns on this calling it unethical and illegal.  In "The Red Badge," he hypnotizes Lisbon (at her request) so she can recall what she did on the night that she's accused of a murder.
• He spends his time at the CBI offices either lying on a leather couch in the unit's bullpen or upstairs in an unfinished part of the building which he adopted as his lair at the start of season three, "Red Sky At Night."
• At the start of the series, Lisbon had an ugly old couch in her office.  Jane bought her the large cream-colored couch she has now.  
• While married, Patrick and his family lived in a modern house in Malibu which he still owns.  He now lives in a long-term motel near the CBI offices shown in the episode, "Strawberries and Cream."  The fact that he still keeps up taxes on the Malibu house despite his paltry CBI pay, indicates that he has money from his psychic days or that perhaps he plays poker when he needs to replenish his funds.  Patrick periodically returns to the Malibu house and sleeps on a mattress under the smiley face Red John painted with his wife's and daughter's blood.
• Jane may be the only TV character ever to be depicted driving blind in two different episodes.  In the first, "Bloodshot," he's temporarily blind and trying to escape a killer.  In the second, "Redline," he drives Walter Mashburn's sports car blindfolded to win a bet.
• He disdains high-tech forensic methods preferring to use his wits to solve crimes.
• He doesn't like doctors, seeing them as cold, inhuman and convinced they're the smartest one in the room.  Patrick believes that he's the smartest in the room and, in "Devil's Cherry," uses that phrase to describe his dead daughter, Charlotte.  
• He doesn't think much of psychiatrists except Sophie Miller, the shrink who rehabilitated him when he was institutionalized.  She appeared as a murder suspect in the episode "Red Brick and Ivy." 
• He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Red John case.
• According to a character list from the pilot script, Patrick was originally named "Daniel Jane."
• He often plays Sudoku when not actively on a case as seen in the episode "Blood In, Blood Out."
• To remember things, Jane stores them in a part of his brain he calls "The Memory Palace."
• Despite his cardiac-inducing good looks, only three women, without ulterior motive,  have directly expressed sexual interest in him.  One is Adriana Jonavich from season one's "Ladies in Red."  "Ahh, the handsome one.  Gay, yes?"  Then later, after he tells her not to leave town,  she eyes him and says, "as you wish."  Meaning "anything you wish."  The others are two young women who asked him to join them at their table in a bar in "Crimson Casanova."  Patrick pointed to his wedding ring and said "I'm married."
• The episode "If It Bleeds, It Leads" shows the only instance of Jane and Lisbon having a realistic couple's disagreement in which Lisbon petulantly refuses his help (he offers too little too late) and Jane smacks the table, upset and exasperated, when she leaves in a huff. In every other conflict, Jane maintains an amused detachment or engages in humorous banter.