Jill Biden’s ex-husband charged with murdering his wife
The booking photo for William Stevenson. (New Castle County Police)
(NEW CASTLE COUNTY, Del.) — Former first lady Jill Biden’s ex-husband has been charged with murdering his wife following an “extensive weeks-long investigation,” police in Delaware announced on Tuesday.
Police officers responding to a “reported domestic dispute” at a home in the Wilmington community of Oak Hill on Dec. 28 found Linda Stevenson, 64, unresponsive on the living room floor, according to police. Her husband, William “Bill” Stevenson, had called 911, police said at the time.
A grand jury in New Castle County on Monday indicted Stevenson, 77, with first-degree murder in connection with his wife’s death, according to police.
The indictment alleges he “did intentionally cause the death” of his wife.
Detectives took Stevenson into custody at his home without incident, police said. He has since been arraigned and is being held in the Howard Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington after failing to post $500,000 bail, police said.
It is unclear if Stevenson has an attorney.
Officers responded to the Stevensons’ home after 11 p.m. on Dec. 28 and attempted lifesaving measures, but Linda Stevenson was later pronounced dead, police said.
Detectives from the New Castle County Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Unit responded to the scene to assume the investigation, officials said.
No additional details, including the cause of death, have been released.
Linda Stevenson ran a bookkeeping business and was “deeply family-oriented,” according to her obituary, which did not mention her husband.
Bill Stevenson founded a popular bar and music hall in the early 1970s in Newark, Delaware. He is the former husband of Jill Biden, the Delaware Department of Justice confirmed to ABC News. The two were married for five years before divorcing in 1975.
Jill Biden married former President Joe Biden two years later, in 1977.
(NEW YORK) — Scientists have factored damage to the ocean into the social cost of carbon for the first time — finding it nearly doubles the economic impact from climate change.
Ocean damage from climate change — dubbed the “blue” social cost of carbon — causes the global cost of carbon dioxide emissions to society to nearly double, according to new findings by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.
The researchers calculated an additional $46.2 per ton of carbon dioxide — amounting to a total of $97.2 per ton of carbon dioxide, a 91% increase, according to the study, published Thursday in Nature Climate Change. Global carbon dioxide emissions were estimated to be 41.6 billion tons in 2024, according to the Global Carbon Budget, implying nearly $2 trillion in ocean-related damages in one year that are currently missing from standard climate cost estimates.
The ocean has never been accounted into the economic harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions before, the researchers said. The ocean was largely overlooked in the standard accounting of the social cost of carbon, despite widespread degradation to coral reef ecosystems, losses from fisheries and damage to coastal infrastructure — all of which are “well documented” and have impacted millions of people globally.
In addition, the distribution of impacts is “highly unequal” across the globe, according to the paper. Islands and small economies will be disproportionately affected, given the regions’ dependence on seafood and nutrition, according to the study.
Scripps researchers felt the need to put a price tag on the harm that climate change causes to the ocean in order to properly inform key decision-makers with a cost-benefit analysis, said environmental economist and assistant professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico Bernardo Bastien-Olvera, who led the study during a postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Oceanography.
“The ocean was the big missing piece in these models that calculate the climate impacts on humans,” Bastien-Olvera told ABC News.
Human-amplified climate change damages oceans by warming temperatures and altering its chemistry, according to the Scripps researchers. The changes then alter the distribution of species and damages ecosystems such as reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds and kelp forests.
Coastal infrastructure, such as shipping ports, can also be damaged by increased flooding and stronger storms.
The social cost of carbon is an economic metric used in climate policy to estimate the damages that a ton of carbon dioxide causes to humans today, Bastien-Olvera said.
The researchers estimated the social cost of carbon by using integrated assessment models to run different future scenarios of how people and the economy might behave during the next century, also incorporating the potential climate impacts on systems such as coral reefs, mangroves, fisheries and seaports, Bastien-Olvera said.
The accounting was further developed by looking at straightforward market-use values, such as decreased fisheries revenue or diminished trade, as well as non-market values such as health impacts of reduced nutrition availability from impacted fisheries and recreational opportunities at the ocean, according to Scripps.
The research accounted for reduced availability of key nutrients in seafood, including calcium, omega-3 fatty acids, protein and iron — the loss of which can be linked to increases in disease risk and additional deaths.
The economic cost is caused by losses in the fishing industry, damage to coastal communities and impacts to systems that help fortify those communities, like mangroves and reefs.
The social cost of carbon is considered a more accurate accounting of harm from climate change than other calculations used as the basis of carbon credits or carbon offsets to travelers, according to Scripps.
Luigi Mangione during a pretrial hearing at New York State Supreme Court in New York, US, on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. Mangione faces state and federal charges in the killing nearly a year ago of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Photographer: Jefferson Siegel/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione is back in a Manhattan courtroom for a seventh day Friday as his lawyers work to get evidence excluded from his state murder case.
The marathon hearing will determine what evidence will used against him when he goes on trial on charges of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk last year.
Testimony has centered around what transpired at the Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s where Mangione was apprehended five days after the shooting.
Altoona police officer Samuel McCoy testified Friday that he knew whatever was happening at the McDonald’s on East Plank Road was serious when he saw his lieutenant, William Hanelly, putting on his bulletproof vest on on his way out of the stationhouse.
“Lt. Hanelly leaving with a vest on, that means something’s happening,” McCoy testified. “Significant.”
McCoy walked to a seated Luigi Mangione in the McDonald’s and immediately asked if he had any weapons.
“With the information I had that he was a homicide suspect, it’s very possible that he had weapons or feel desperate which makes people do erratic things,” McCoy testified.
McCoy then noticed a backpack on the floor and is seen on body camera footage moving it.
“I asked him, ‘Is this your property?’ He indicated to me it was,” McCoy testified. He said he moved the bag “so that if he decides he wants to make a dramatic exit, per se, he doesn’t have access to any weapons.”
McCoy is then heard on camera asking Mangione, “Do you know what all this nonsense is about?” The officer said he wanted to gauge Mangione’s reaction.
“Through my experience, if somebody is being questioned and they’re not involved they’ll have one type of reaction and if they are involved, they’ll have a different type of reaction,” McCoy testified.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Mangione is heard answering.
When McCoy asked how he had arrived at the McDonalds, Mangione indicated he did not want to speak.
“I said, ‘That’s fine.’ I did not ask him any more questions,” McCoy testified.
On cross-examination, McCoy said those questions were meant to elicit information.
The defense has argued that police waited too long to read Mangione his Miranda rights and that the police actions amounted to overkill.
McCoy conceded on cross-examination Mangione was largely compliant.
“None of the actions he took that day were frightening, made me fear for my life,” McCoy said.
On re-direct examination, he testified that officers had “established control” of the scene, but that going in he said “there is serious safety concerns,” given Mangione was suspected of committing a homicide.
On Thursday, two supervisory officers who were at the McDonald’s testified that police did not need a warrant to search his backpack.
“It’s a warrant exception in Pennsylvania,” Lt. William Hanelly testified. “Police can search the person and their items.”
Hanelly testified that he offered a responding officer a free sandwich from his favorite local place, Luigetta’s, if he actually collared the suspected killer.
“If you get the New York City shooter I’ll buy you Luigetta’s for lunch,” Hanelly said he texted patrolman Joseph Detwiler. The text included a wink emoji because, Hanelly testified, it seemed “preposterous” to him that the suspect could actually be sitting in a fast food place five hours away from the scene of the shooting.
The hearing is expected to continue into next week with a written decision from Judge Gregory Carro expected in January.
he US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — A person with what appeared to be a gun was arrested near the front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., according to Capitol police.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
