The former husband of Jill Biden has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of his current wife, more than a month after police responded to a domestic dispute at their Delaware home.
William Stevenson, 77, was taken into custody without incident Monday at his residence in the 1300 block of Idlewood Road following a grand jury indictment in New Castle County Superior Court.
The charge stems from the December 28 death of Linda Stevenson, 64, who was found unresponsive in the living room and pronounced dead at the scene despite officers’ attempts to revive her. Her body was sent to the Delaware Division of Forensic Science for an autopsy, though a cause of death has not been publicly released.
The indictment resulted from an extensive weeks-long investigation by the New Castle County police Criminal Investigations Unit and the Delaware Department of Justice.
Stevenson was arraigned at Justice of the Peace Court 2 and committed to the Howard Young Correctional Institution after failing to post $500,000 cash bail. It was not immediately clear if he had retained an attorney.
In her obituary, Linda Stevenson was remembered as “deeply family-oriented” and a devoted Philadelphia Eagles fan who founded a small bookkeeping business in her later years, NBC News reported.
Jill Biden, now 74, was 18 and a University of Delaware student when she married Stevenson in February 1970. He later opened The Stone Balloon Club, a well-known college bar near the university in Newark that hosted performers including Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, and The Allman Brothers Band over the decades.
The couple divorced in May 1975 after five years of marriage. Jill Biden met then-Sen. Joe Biden in March of that year and sought a half-share ownership in the Stone Balloon, but was denied. She married Joe Biden two years later.
