Jill Biden’s former husband has pleaded not guilty to the charge of murdering his current wife.
William Stevenson, 77, made his plea during a virtual court appearance in Wilmington, Delaware, on Tuesday.
This month, a state grand jury indicted Stevenson for the murder of his wife, Linda Stevenson, aged 64.
Jill Biden, who has been married to President Joe Biden since 1977, was previously married to William Stevenson for five years, from 1970 to 1975, meeting him during her college years.
Linda Stevenson was discovered unresponsive in the home she shared with her husband in Wilmington following a police response to a ‘domestic dispute’ call on the night of December 28, 2025.
She was pronounced dead on December 29 after emergency responders attempted life-saving interventions.
On February 2, William was arrested and on February 3 was charged with his wife’s murder.
He was unable to post $2 million bail and has remained in custody since his arrest. His next court hearing is set for March 16. He is represented by a public defender.
William Stevenson, the ex-husband of Jill Biden, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday, February 16, 2026 on charges that he killed his wife Linda Stevenson
Linda Stevenson, 64, was found unresponsive at the couple’s Wilmington, Delaware home on December 29, 2025 after authorities responded to a ‘domestic dispute’ call
Jill (circled in red) was married To Bill Stevenson (also circled on right) from 1970 to 1975. Two years after their divorce, Jill married Joe Biden
Jill has not publicly weighed-in on her ex-husband’s alleged crime and a spokesperson has declined to comment on the charges.
Linda’s cause of death has still not been released, but her obituary does not mention her husband despite listing her other survivors – her daughter, Christina Vettori, and grandchild.
Stevenson married then-Jill Jacobs in 1970 while she was an 18-year-old college student at the University of Delaware. He was a 23-year-old businessman at the time.
The pair divorced in 1975 and two years later she married then-New Castle County Councilman Joe, the future president.
Stevenson later claimed that Jill had cheated on him and that he kicked her out of the house when he learned of the affair with Biden. They both worked on Biden’s campaign.
William, who went by Bill, founded the Stone Balloon, a popular music venue in Newark, Delaware, in the early 1970s.
Linda Stevenson ran a bookkeeping business. She was described in her obituary as a family-oriented mother and grandmother.
William, 77, was arrested on February 2, 2026 for the murder of his wife in Delaware
Jill Biden reflected on her first marriage in her 2019 memoir where she says she thought at the time they were ‘destined for each other’ but that it was really a ‘mistake of youth’
Representatives for Jill told Inside Edition in 2020 that the affair claims he repeated to the Daily Mail were ‘fictitious’ to ‘sell and promote a book’ that Bill was preparing to release.
‘The relationship of Joe and Jill Biden is well documented,’ the spokesman said.
‘Jill Biden separated from her first husband irreconcilably in the fall of 1974 and moved out of their marital home. Joe and Jill Biden had their first date in March of 1975, and they married in June of 1977.’
In her 2019 memoir, When the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself, Jill admitted she first thought she and Stevenson were ‘destined for each other.’
‘Looking back, it may seem like a mistake of youth,’ she scathingly wrote about the man she indirectly referred to as ‘charming and entrepreneurial’ in the book.
The Stevenson’s and Biden’s shared Wilmington as their hometown throughout their lives.
