Lamar Burgess

Lamar Burgess was the head of the PreCrime Division and was responsible for spearheading its development and operations. He sought to expand his division from an experiment into a nation-wide police force, catching would-be murderers and saving tens of thousands of lives in the process. However, his dream would not survive, as he was exposed for the murder of Anna Lively, and committed suicide.

Pre-Minority Report
Not much is known about Lamar's early life, except that his father once told him that "one doesn't choose the things he believes in, they choose him". He would pass on this wisdom to John Anderton later in life while discussing Anderton's belief in PreCrime being perfect and above reproach.

At some point in his life, he married a woman named Celeste and it is unknown if they ever had any children of their own. In any case, Lamar and Celeste met John and his wife Lara in Baltimore where Lamar gave John a gift: a Beretta 9000S pistol that John carried with him for the rest of his life. After the loss of their son, Sean, John and Lara divorced with John going to work for PreCrime under Lamar's supervision and tutelage. Lamar later remarked that John was "the best cop that he ever knew and in some ways the best man as well."

While developing the PreCrime system, Lamar and Dr. Iris Hineman joked that they "were the parents of PreCrime" in reference to the fact that they were spearheading the project themself. They discovered that the PreCogs could sometimes see alternate futures for certain individuals who might murder others. Realizing that this discovery could undermine the credibility of PreCrime being a perfect system, both Burgess and Hineman decided to keep it a secret.

Unbeknownst to anyone else, a woman named Anne Lively had just gotten rid of her drug addiction and wanted her daughter Agatha back in her life. Agatha was one of three PreCogs besides Arthur and Dash who could predict future murders and she was considerably the strongest of the three. As such, without all three PreCogs working together, PreCrime would be unable to function. Unwilling to bear the idea of losing a project that he and Dr. Iris Hineman had conceived and worked so hard to build, Lamar decided to murder Lively to ensure that PreCrime would remain intact. So, he staged the murder and killed Anne Lively, using the system to disguise his actions. This act would go unnoticed for five years until Anderton discovered evidence about Anne Lively and brought this to Lamar's attention.

Minority Report
Lamar was at the forefront of pushing for PreCrime to be nationalized while being kept under his and John's jurisdiction instead of under the control of the federal government. By then, Dr. Hineman had retired in seclusion to a house in a forest somewhere and Burgess was close to reaching retirement. While Danny Witwer was conducting an audit of the PreCrime Division, John Anderton found evidence of Anne Lively from Agatha's vision in the Temple and brought these findings to Lamar hoping to find some answers.

His acts once more in danger of being made known to the public, Lamar secretly framed John for the murder of Leo Crow by using the memory of John's son Sean to drive him to that event. First, he went to an unknown prison and approached Leo Crow in his cell, offering to release him from his incarceration and to ensure that his family would be well paid for if Leo Crow acted as if he was responsible for kidnapping and murdering Anderton's son. When Leo Crow's death was made a reality, Witwer discovered that all was not as it originally seemed in that PreCrime had been chasing after the wrong man.

Lamar and Witwer met at Anderton's apartment to discuss the latter's findings and the murder of Anne Lively. When Lamar saw that Witwer was about to uncover the truth about Anne Lively's murder, Lamar shot and killed him with the same gun which he had gifted to John years prior and had been used to kill Leo Crow. Leaving the gun on the apartment floor, Lamar left the apartment and framed John for both murders hoping to settle this matter once and for all.

In the aftermath of John's arrest, his ex-wife Lara went to Lamar for comfort and solace. She asked about Anne Lively, which Lamar claimed to know nothing about, and also to ask for leniency on John's behalf by stating the reasons why he went to work for Lamar all those years ago after Sean's disappearance. Lamar offered to examine the evidence concerning Witwer's death, but let slip by mistake that Anne Lively had drowned (a fact that Lara pointed out she knew nothing about). With his blunder revealed, Lamar left for the press conference concerning PreCrime's nationalization and promised to visit Lara at her cottage the next day (although he had most likely intended to murder her as well just to tie up the loose ends on her part).

Later that night at a dinner celebrating the new National PreCrime Initiative, Lamar was honored by the staff and guests with a special antique Civil War-era pistol which he hoped would signify the end of murder in their country once and for all. By then, Lara had deduced Lamar's sinister intentions and managed to free John from imprisonment, helping him to reveal Lamar as the murderer responsible for Anne Lively's death and the true mastermind behind John's supposed crimes.

Death
With his actions exposed and his reputation destroyed, Lamar set out to kill John once and for all using the pistol he'd just received from his colleagues. On the balcony overlooking the cityscape of Washington D.C., John presented Lamar with a dilemma: Kill John and be imprisoned for life even though the PreCrime system's credibility would remain intact, or spare John's life and allow the PreCrime system to be dismantled and shut down. John noted the biggest flaw in the PreCrime system: that because Lamar had seen his own future, he could change it accordingly if he so wished it. With all this mind, Lamar made the difficult choice: he killed himself and, with his dying breath, begged John to forgive him for all the things he had done. He lay on the ground dead, with his body cradled by his mournful wife as the very system he worked so hard to protect was destined to be ended once and for all.