Jill Biden’s ex-husband charged with killing his wife

William Stevenson has been taken into custody in Delaware following the alleged murder of his spouse, Linda Stevenson

The ex-husband of former US first lady Jill Biden has been arrested and charged with murdering his current wife in their Delaware home in December, local authorities said in a statement on Monday.

William Stevenson, 77, has been taken into custody and is facing a first-degree murder charge in the death of Linda Stevenson. He is being held at the Howard Young Correctional Institution after failing to post $500,000 cash bail, New Castle County Police in Delaware have said.

The arrest comes after a weeks-long investigation into the death of 64-year-old Stevenson. Police have provided no details regarding the cause of death, but an initial statement had noted that officers responded to a domestic dispute on December, 28 at a residence in the Wilmington area. At the time, the authorities said that a woman was found unresponsive in the living room and died despite officers trying to resuscitate her.

Stevenson, who has been charged with first-degree murder, faces a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole if convicted under Delaware law. The state abolished the death penalty in 2024, making life in prison the maximum punishment for the offense.

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Jill Biden married William Stevenson in February 1970, when she was 18 years old and he was 23, shortly after she finished high school. The marriage ended in divorce in 1975. Later that year, she met Joe Biden, who was then a US senator from Delaware, and they married in 1977.

“Looking back, it may seem like that relationship was a mistake of youth,” Biden wrote in her 2019 memoir. “But there was a time when I truly believed we were destined for each other.”

The Biden post-presidential office has not commented on Stevenson’s arrest or the charges.