William Stevenson, the ex-husband of former first lady Jill Biden, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of his late wife, Linda Stevenson.
As TMZ reports, on December 28, 2025, police were called to the Stevensons’ Delaware home. Linda, 64, was found unresponsive in the living room around 11:15 p.m and later pronounced dead after the New Castle County Police attempted to administer aid. The cause of death has not been released, although cardiac arrest is mentioned in audio from the scene.
On Monday (February 2), Stevenson was arrested and held on $500,000 bond. Per online records, he is currently being held in Wilmington’s Howard R. Young Correctional Institution.
Stevenson, 77, and Biden, 74, married in 1970, when Biden was eighteen and Stevenson was twenty-three, and divorced five years later. The ex spouses, who attended the University of Delaware, do not share children.
In 1977, Biden married future 46th U.S. President Joe Biden when he was a senator, and became stepmother to his three children. The couple also share a daughter, Ashley, who was born in 1981.
Biden has discussed her divorce from Stevenson in a 2021 episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, sharing that she felt like a “failure” upon their split.
“I didn’t know anybody who had been divorced. I felt like it was a failure on my part. I lost my self esteem because I kept thinking, ‘What’s wrong with me, why couldn’t I make this work?'” Biden said on the show.