The ex-husband of the former first lady Jill Biden was arrested and charged with murder in the death of his current wife, the police in New Castle County, Del., said on Tuesday.
The ex-husband, William Stevenson, 77, was arrested on Monday after a grand jury indictment charged him with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Linda Stevenson, 64, on Dec. 28. Mr. Stevenson was married to Dr. Biden from 1970 until their divorce in 1975.
Mr. Stevenson is being held in custody after he was unable to post $500,000 cash bail, the police said. It was unclear whether he had legal representation.The police have provided no details about how Mrs. Stevenson died.
On Tuesday afternoon, several news vans and an unmarked police car stood sentry in front of Mr. Stevenson’s split-level home in the working-class Oak Hill neighborhood of Wilmington.
Two cars, a black SUV and a black sedan, sat in the driveway and a wreath with pink, green and white roses adorned the tan-colored house.
Mr. Stevenson met Jill Biden on a beach in 1969, when she was an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Delaware. They married six months later.
“I truly believed we were destined for each other,” Mrs. Biden said in her memoir. “Looking back it may seem like a mistake of youth.”
Growing up outside Philadelphia, Mr. Stevenson had dreams of being a college football star. Family troubles led him to reconsider going to Ohio State and instead he attended the University of Delaware, he said on a local cable access show decades ago.
In 1971, Mr. Stevenson, then 23 and newly married, used a $14,000 inheritance from an uncle to buy a bar in downtown Newark, Del., he wrote in a newspaper article He renamed it The Stone Balloon and had a vision for entertainment that would draw college students.
In 1975, shortly before Dr. Biden’s divorce from Mr. Stevenson became final, she began to date Joe Biden, then the young senator from Delaware and an acquaintance of Mr. Stevenson, according to memoirs by Dr. Biden.
Mr. Stevenson seemed to be in a perpetual battle with the City of Newark over construction permits and local newspapers chronicled his troubles paying taxes. Eventually, he sold the bar and in 2005 it closed.
“I always thought he was an interesting guy,” Will Webber, who has known Mr. Stevenson since his early days running The Stone Balloon, said in an interview. “I never watched him mistreat anyone.”
Stacy M. Brown contributed reporting from Wilmington, Del. and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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