Robert Goren
From The Law & Order Wiki
| Robert Goren | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Detective Robert Goren. | ||
| Title Detective | ||
| Affiliation New York City Police Department | ||
| Division Major Case Squad | ||
| Occupation Police Officer | ||
| Current status Alive | ||
| First Appearance CI: "One" | ||
| Played by Vincent D'Onofrio |
Robert Goren (born August 20, 1961) is a detective in the Major Case Squad in the NYPD. He is an intense, intelligent, and imposing man who uses his intuition and insight into human nature to size up suspects and pick apart the details of crimes.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Goren is the son of Frances Goren and brother of Frank. Both of them had troubled lives, as Frank was addicted to gambling and drugs, and Frances was a Schizophrenic living at Carmel Ridge. While there, Robert would call her most days and visit her once a week. Often, her calls and difficulties with her illness would interfere with his work.
[edit] Army life
He had served in the United States Army, and was in the Criminal Investigation Division. He had been deployed to South Korea and Germany. While serving, he met Dr. Declan Gage, who was one of the first criminal profilers. He would go on to be both a mentor and a father figure to Goren.
[edit] Police force
[edit] Nicole Wallace
During his investigation into the murder of the President at Hudson University, Robert Goren first encountered Nicole Wallace, a beautiful, bisexual criminal mastermind from Australia. Under the guise of English professor Elizabeth Hitchens, Wallace had seduced a colleague, Dr. Christine Fellowes, and a desperate graduate student named Mark Bayley. She convinced the weak-willed Bayley to commit the murder, while using Fellowes as an alibi. Wallace created just enough confusion to escape arrest. ("Anti-Thesis")
She became infatuated with "Bobby" in her own twisted way, and followed his career for several months afterwards; when Goren and Eames arrested Doctors Roger Stern and Scott Borman, who had been waging biological warfare on their ex-girlfriends, Wallace managed to steal vials of anthrax from the duo's arsenal. Sometime later, after marrying a wealthy man named Gavin Haynes in order to secure citizenship, she used the anthrax to draw Goren's attention to Daniel Croyden, a paranoid little man who was accused of using anthrax to commit murder. Goren tried hard to incriminate Croyden, but couldn't make the charges stick. Croyden's paranoia became so agitated that he committed suicide, and Goren was hit with unwanted attention from the media. Eventually, Goren found evidence that Wallace had framed Croyden, but by then Wallace had convinced Haynes that she was innocent, and he paid for sufficient legal representation that she was found not guilty. ("A Person of Interest")
Nicole later returned to bedevil Goren anew, after divorcing Haynes and taking a young lover named Ella Miyazaki, with whom she committed a string of jewelry heists. When the connection between the two women was discovered, Wallace naturally protested her innocence, but when Miyazaki botched an attempt to kill Haynes, Nicole murdered her and then faked her own death. During the course of the investigation, Goren managed to find documentation from Wallace's earlier crimes, and from these he formulated a theory that Nicole had been sexually abused from the age of three until sometime in her teens. ("Great Barrier")
She resurfaced in 2005, now engaged to a widowed doctor named Evan Chapel and calling herself Leslie Eastman. There was evidence suggesting that she'd killed Chapel's brother Larry, but as Goren and Eames investigated, they discovered that Dr. Chapel was aware of "Leslie's" history and had romanced her because his first wife had put a considerable amount of money into a trust fund for their daughter, Gwen, and Evan would never get that money unless Gwen died. He was thus planning to kill the poor girl, knowing that Nicole would be blamed for it. Nicole genuinely loved her stepdaughter-to-be and sought "Bobby's" help. Goren and Eames arrested Dr. Chapel, but Goren told Wallace that Gwen would never be safe with her. Nicole kidnapped Gwen, but left her in the care of an aunt. She cursed him for forcing her to part with the only person who truly loved her, but as Goren would later find out, she grew to love him in her own strange way, and thus never engaged Bobby again, though she did re-emerge four months later to kill sociopath Bernard Fremont, for reasons unrelated to her relationship with "Bobby."
[edit] Sins of the Father
In 2007, a death-row inmate named Mark Ford Brady, who was facing an imminent execution for raping and murdering seven women, contacted Goren through a common acquaintence, Wally Stevens, and revealed to the detective that there had been many more victims that the police had never found, as a way to stall his execution (as the police would have to investigate his claims.) At the time, Goren was struggling in his personal life with his mother's decision to discontinue chemotherapy, a decision that both she and Bobby knew would cut her life expectancy to just a few weeks. Perhaps seeking some distraction from that unpleasant knowledge, he decided to accept Brady's challenge. But he would soon regret this decison.
Following hints and confessions from Brady, Goren found two large photo albums with pictures of Brady's previous victims, some of whom had been killed as far back as forty years ago. During one interrogation, Brady mentioned having an affair sometime around 1965 with a married woman named Frances Goren - his mother. Furthermore, this affair happened just before Bobby was conceived, which left the detective with the sickening suspicion that Brady was his father. Desperate for answers, he asked Frank, who replied that he had known Brady in his childhood as "Uncle Mark", and was surprised to learn Robert did not remember him like he did. Frank also alluded to a car crash that had left Frances badly injured and had precipitated the onset of her schizophrenia. He finally confronted his mother about the affair, and she confessed that she had been with Brady around the time of Bobby's conception, and had continued to see Brady for several years afterwards. Goren then brought up the incident that caused Frances and Mark to split, and his mother grew upset. There had been no car crash - Brady had brutally raped her and just left her to her fate. Barely minutes after her life was laid bare, Frances Goren lost her battle with cancer, and Bobby felt horrible guilt for interrogating her in her last moments. ("Endgame")
[edit] Alienating Alexandra
[edit] Heaven and Purgatory
Some months later, Frank crept back into Bobby's life. He revealed that he had a son, Donny Carlson, whom he'd never mentioned to Bobby and who was now in the psychiatric unit at Tates, serving time for a drug bust. Donny, it seemed, had recently witnessed the guards disposing of an inmate who'd died from severe dehydration, and he feared that the guards would kill him. Goren looked into Donny's case and learned that the boy had been railroaded by an incompetant judge, but the crime for which Donny had been arrested occurred outside the jurisdiction of the 3-6, and thus he could not investigate. Around that time, Capt. Ross grew concerned about Goren's state of mind, and ordered him to take a few days off. Goren used this time to create a false identity, William Brady, and get himself arrested and thrown into the psych unit at Tates. The only person he informed of this plan was Eames. He tried to locate Donny, but in the process got thrown into "Heaven", an isolation unit, where he was strapped down and left to dehydrate. He nearly died as a result of repeated sessions of this treatment, but it had the unintended benefit of enabling Donny to escape. On the evening of November 1, Eames became concerned after not hearing from Bobby for several days. She informed Ross about what Goren had done and together, they hurried to spring him. ("Untethered")
In the ensuing ruckus, Robert Goren was suspended for five months and ordered to receive counciling. In need of work, he was approached by another suspended cop, Mike Stoat, who offered him a job working "security" for a local crime boss John Testarossa, who happened to be under investigation by Eames and her interim partner. Stoat was also under investigation after murdering two English tourists in the course of a hit on drug dealer Wilson Crawford, and so Capt. Ross brokered a deal with Chief of Detectives Kenny Moran whereby Goren helped gather evidence on Stoat and his former partner, Officer Lois Melago, and in exchange, Moran would reinstate Goren. Of course, no one informed Eames or Daniels about this deal, and this nearly resulted in Eames shooting Goren when the police raided Testarossa's office. Still, Testarossa, Stoat, and Melago all went to jail, and so Moran reinstated Goren, though Eames was less than pleased about being kept in the dark. ("Purgatory")
[edit] Framed
For a while Goren seemed to be back in his element, solving baffling murders, but all too soon, things took a turn for the worst. He found out that Mark Ford Brady was indeed his biological father, and though he tried to keep in under wraps, word of the DNA test results eventually reached Ross. Not long after, Frank Goren was fatally poisoned, and Goren soon recognized it as the handiwork of his old nemesis, Nicole Wallace. He suspected that Wallace was seeking revenge for his convincing her to abandon Gwen Chapel, who was now showing signs of cancer. This seemed to be confirmed when, not long after, Dr. Declan Gage was put in the hospital by an attempted poisoning, while Jo Gage killed herself. Panicked, Goren tried to locate Donny Carlson, who was still missing, hoping to avert the boy's death at Wallace's hands. Instead, however, he found Wallace's heart.
Goren began to believe someone was trying to make it look like he was settling old scores. It didn't help that he freaked out when he learned that Ross knew about his parentage. Growing increasingly paranoid, Goren reached out to Dr. Gage for help, but Gage only seemed to stoke further paranoia, suggesting that the killer was Eames (as Goren had wronged her by working against her during his suspension, while the doctor had essentially turned his daughter into a serial killer, and thus was responsible for her kidnapping.) However, looking over all the facts, Goren discovered that the killer was Gage himself. It transpired that the once-brilliant profiler was slowly succumbing to dementia, and, as his own daughter had failed to meet his expectations, Robert Goren seemed to be his natural successor. Gage believed that Goren's multiply-addicted brother Frank and his arch-nemesis Nicole would continue to hold the detective back as long as they both lived, and thus he had arranged for Nicole to kill Frank, after which he killed her. Goren was horrified, especially after learning how much the doctor had relished murdering Nicole, and he ended up so distraught that he was sent on compassionate leave. ("Frame")
[edit] Trivia
His Social Security number is 845-67-3906. Nicole Wallace somehow obtained it, much to Goren's dismay.
One of Goren's favorite magazines is the Smithsonian Magazine. He subscribes to it because fits well on his treadmill.
Goren hates beaches, although he will go to one as part of his job.
He is Pro-Choice
[edit] Appearances
- Canon (1 show, 8 seasons, 125 episodes, 1 game)
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent (First appearance, 8 seasons, 125 episodes) - Vincent D'Onofrio
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent Game - Vincent D'Onofrio
 Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Main Characters
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Characters: Alexandra Eames • Robert Goren • Zack Nichols • Danny Ross • Megan Wheeler | |
