William Stevenson, 77, was married to Jill Biden for five years until they divorced in 1975. Photo / New Castle County Police
Jill Biden’s ex-husband has been charged with murdering his wife.
William Stevenson, 77, was charged with first-degree murder following an investigation into the death of Linda Stevenson.
Linda, 64, was found dead at their home on the evening of December 28 after officers responded to a domestic dispute call.
The couple had reportedly been married for 40 years. Officers attempted to save Linda, whose body was found in the living room, but were unsuccessful.
In December, police said her body was being sent for a post-mortem to “determine the cause and manner of her death”.
TMZ reported in December that William Stevenson called 911 about a domestic dispute at his home, and was waiting when officers arrived and found his wife dead.
Dispatch audio from emergency responders mentions a “cardiac arrest”, but the context is unclear.
Stevenson, reportedly a former college football player, founded The Stone Balloon, a popular bar and music venue near the University of Delaware.
Ben Schreckinger, a journalist, interviewed Stevenson in 2020 for his book on the Bidens, and said the former nightclub owner had not been worn down by his “years of hard partying”.
“He looks like the legendary football announcer John Madden, except that his salt-and-pepper hair stands on end, as if an electric current is moving through him,” Schreckinger wrote.
Describing Linda, whom he met for lunch alongside her husband, he said: “If she is not long-suffering, [she] is at least very patient.”
Stevenson is being held in a prison in Wilmington, Delaware, after failing to post US$500,000 ($824,871) bail, authorities said.
An obituary for Linda, published the day after her death, said she was survived by relatives including her daughter and granddaughter. It did not mention her husband.
Linda, who ran a bookkeeping business, was said to be “deeply family-oriented” and “treasured time spent making memories, especially on family vacations”.
“As a Philadelphia Eagles fan, Linda found joy cheering on her team – whether at home or surrounded by her ‘second family’ at Outback [Steakhouse], where laughter and friendship were always present,” the obituary read.
“Linda will be remembered as tenacious, kind-hearted and fiercely loyal.
“Her strength, resilience and unwavering love for her family and friends will never be forgotten, and her absence will be felt deeply by all who knew her.”
Jill Biden, the former first lady, was 18 years old when she married Stevenson, having dated him for just a few months.
She was married to Stevenson for five years until they divorced in 1975.
“We were young, and it didn’t take long before we grew in different directions,” she later wrote in her memoir.
She married Joe Biden, who was then a senator for Delaware, two years later.
Biden has said he was introduced to his second wife by his brother, Frank, after noticing her photograph in a tourism advert at Wilmington airport.
In an interview in 2020, shortly before Biden was elected president, Stevenson accused his former wife of having an affair with the then-senator.
“I was betrayed by the Bidens,” he told Inside Edition. “Joe was my friend. Jill was my wife.”
A spokesman for Jill Biden dismissed the claims as “fictitious” at the time, saying she “separated from her first husband irreconcilably in the fall of 1974” and that the Bidens “had their first date in March of 1975”.
Stevenson added that he would vote for Donald Trump over Biden in the 2020 election.
Jill Biden is Joe Biden’s second wife. The Democrat had been married to Neilia Hunter for six years until she was killed, alongside their baby daughter, Naomi, in a car accident in 1972. Their sons Beau, aged 3, and Hunter, aged 2, survived the crash.
Joe Biden, who admitted later he contemplated killing himself by jumping off the Delaware Memorial Bridge, has credited his second wife for helping his shattered family recover after the disaster.
“She put us back together,” he said of Jill Biden in a speech in 2020. “She gave me back my life. She gave us back a family.”
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