Orville Tanner was Red John's sidekick in the early days of his career as a serial killer and the first of Red John's known followers. He was caught by the police, and when he was tried for the 1998 murder of a young woman (which turned out to be the third in the line of RJK's victims), Tanner claimed that he was only a look-out and that the real killer was a man who went by the name of Red John.