James Marcus

James Marcus was born in 1918 and graduated from university at the age of 21, becoming a prominent expert in the field of virology. He later went on to meet Ozwell E. Spencer and Edward Ashford and the three became close, sharing common interests. Together they funded and led an expedition to Africa in 1966 where on December 4th, they officially discovered the Progenitor Virus.
Marcus believed the virus would hold the key to actually altering the DNA of a lifeform and so wanted to take it back to America and begin detailed investigations as soon as possible. As time went by, the virus caused a split in interests between Marcus and Spencer and a power struggle would ensue that would eventually end the life of one of them.



Marcus spent the next nine years working on the Progenitor Virus, performing experiments on various types of insects, mammals and amphibians, and although the Progenitor on its own was not capable of producing bio-organic weapons, this research laid the foundations for the very first T-Virus B.O.W.s to be created. However, as his work progressed, he became frustrated and deemed it necessary that human test subjects needed to be introduced if his research was to go forward. Little did he know however, that Spencer had already performed the first human Progenitor tests almost a decade earlier with the Trevor family. Neither Marcus nor Edward Ashford were ever made aware of these experiments.

In 1977, Marcus began to focus his research on the study of leeches. It was also that year that new students Albert Wesker and William Birkin were enrolled at the Training Facility and he immediately saw a potential in them that he had not seen in anyone else during his nine years as Director.

The pivotal moment in his career came in September 1977 when he successfully mixed the Progenitor Virus with Leech DNA to create the T-Virus. In the months following, Marcus began to use students from the school in his tests, becoming more and more isolated form his staff and was spending weeks at a time locked away in his private laboratory beneath the church.
He perfected the T-Virus in January 1978 but decided to keep his discovery a secret from Spencer and the other members of the executive board. Ever since Edward Ashford's death in July 1968, he had suspected that Spencer had been looking for ways to gain total control of Umbrella, yet Marcus knew, now that he had the T-Virus, that he now held the power and could use it to oust Spencer and his followers out of the company power struggle for good. The only person Marcus ever confided in, was Brandon Bailey, who was by this point permanently running Umbrella Africa and sending back regular Progenitor Samples back to Raccoon.

However, James Marcus made one fatal mistake; his trust of Albert Wesker and William Birkin. He had often noted in his diaries that those two were the only ones he trusted, yet he failed to realise that Birkin and Wesker were spying on Marcus and were making regular reports back to Spencer at the Arklay Labs. Marcus also had no knowledge whatsoever of Spencer's grand plan for Wesker and that he was nursing his development very carefully as part of the mysterious 'Project W'.

By the time Marcus finally suspected something after finding the entrances to his private labs tampered with, it was too late. The number of students dissappearing from the facility was becoming too large to cover up and he was now backed into a corner. He decided to postpone his plans to move against Spencer and instead officially announced the discovery of the T-Virus to the board at the next schedueled Director's meeting. However, instead of the growing praise and promotion he expected to receive, he was presented with reports proving he was conducting unauthorised human experimentation and that he had been withholding groundbreaking new research from the rest of the company. He was stripped of his authority and was removed from power completely. The Training Facility was closed down and all T-Virus research was transferred to the Arklay Labs under the supervision of Albert Wesker and William Birkin.

Embittered and his dream of ousting Spencer now in tatters, Marcus was left alone in his old lab, forced to watch from a distance as the T-Virus research came on leaps and bounds at Arklay. Just to rub it in, William Birkin was even recognised as the official discoverer of the virus.

When all T-Virus research was completed ten years later in 1988, Spencer assumed total control of Umbrella and had James Marcus killed, ironically by the very men Marcus had once trusted implicitly; Wesker and Birkin.