Cobb Howell is the minor antagonist of The Mentalist TV-show. He is a stabble owner, who turns out to be a killer. He was played by Jim Beaver.
Biography[]
Agents Kimball Cho and Wayne Rigsby and consultant Patrick Jane are on night duty. They are entertaining themselves with card tricks. However, news comes that a body has been found. Kimball, Wayne and Patrick (and soon Teresa Lisbon) go to the place where the body was found. A man has been murdered, his identity is unknown. Only a ring and a note on a napkin "Forgive me" were found on him (Patrick also jokingly throws Wayne's playing card into the dead man's pocket and taunts him about it). Soon they find the restaurant where the dead man was before the murder. There he is identified as Bill Sutton, a jockey who recently had a fight with his girlfriend. He worked for a certain Cobb Howell. Patrick Jane conducts an investigation at the place of work of the dead man, questioning his colleagues. He finds out that one of the girls who worked with horses and was Bill's student is harassed by one of the employees. Another employee is a spy for competitors. But none of them killed Bill. Later (with the help of his colleague Grace Van Pelt, who knows a lot about horses), Patrick realizes that Cobb Howell was switching horses. The fastest horse was hard to ride because he had a bad temper. So Howell would switch them so that everyone would put the fastest horse (the one that was easy to ride) in the race so that everyone would bet on him and Howell could make money. However, Bill, being an experienced jockey, began to realize that something was wrong with the horses, and Howell killed him. Howell was arrested and his winnings were annulled.