Ridge mental health facility. She is then diagnosed with lymphoma which eventually results in her death. Goren is estranged from his older brother, Frank (Tony Goldwyn), a drug addict who also has a gambling problem and is depicted as being sometimes homeless. Frank has a son, Donny, who asks for help when he is incarcerated. To that end, Goren goes undercover in the prison's psychiatric ward and uncovers a culture of prisoner abuse. While he saves his nephew, he is suspended for his unorthodox investigation. When Frank refuses to help him help Donny, Goren disowns him. While high on drugs, Frank is murdered by Goren's nemesis Nicole Wallace (Olivia d'Abo). Frances' husband, whom Goren had believed to be his father (see "Mark Ford Brady" section below), gambled frequently on horse races and was a serial adulterer. He left Goren's mother when Goren was 11, making little effort to stay close to the family. In season 2, a personal friend of Goren's mentions a funeral, implying that the elder Goren had died before the series began. Mark Ford Brady In the episode "Endgame", serial killer Mark Ford Brady (Roy Scheider), anxious to delay his scheduled execution, arranges for Goren and Eames to interview him about victims not yet attributed to him. Goren, with help from his brother, pieces together a story which shows that Brady and Frances Goren had an affair, which continued until Robert was four and Frank was seven; the relationship ended after Brady raped and beat Frances within an inch of her life. Goren asks his mother on her deathbed about Brady; she replies that she doesn't know whether Brady is his father. At a later date, Goren reveals that he has DNA evidence that Brady was his biological father. Military and early police life Goren served in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division and was stationed in Germany and Korea. He joined the NYPD as a detective, serving in the Narcotics Division, and later as a detective in the Major Case Squad. His mentor, FBI criminal profiler Declan Gage (John Glover), taught him how to use his intelligence, empathy and imagination to construct complex psychological profiles of suspects. Goren also learned how to use his physicality to intimidate and unsettle people while interrogating them, the most famous example being his habit - introduced in the pilot episode, "One" - of cocking his head at odd angles in