Former restaurant employee convicted for double murder in a 33-year-old cold case.

After a 33-year investigation and a two-week trial, a jury has reached a verdict in a cold case involving two murders that took place in Prunedale in 1991.

Ira Bastian, now 86 and who most recently lived in Fresno, was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder for the killings of George Smith, then 67, and Smith’s mother-in-law Eva Thompson, 79. The jury also found true special circumstance allegations that Bastian murdered Smith and Thompson during the commission of a burglary and that he committed multiple murders in the first degree. Additionally, they found that he used a deadly weapon, a kitchen knife, in both murders.

The crime occurred on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 1991 at Smith’s Restaurant on El Camino Real in Prunedale. The building was a shared space: one half was a restaurant and the other was a residence where the restaurant owners, George and Anna Smith, lived with Anna’s mother, Eva Thompson. Smith and Thompson’s bodies were discovered by Anna Smith after she returned home from grocery shopping. It was later determined George had been stabbed 11 times Thompson, who was bed-ridden and unable to walk, had been strangled and her throat had been slit with a knife.

Bastian, a former employee at the restaurant, committed the robbery on a Monday—a day he knew the restaurant was closed and that George would do payroll—making it an opportune day to burglarize the restaurant, according to Assistant District Attorney Matthew L’Heureux. Smith’s room was found ransacked, drawers left open, and cash had been stolen. The knife used in the murders was later recovered in a laundry hamper in the hallway connecting the restaurant to the residence. 

The case went dormant after years of investigation until, in 2024 and 2025, additional DNA testing provided strong support that Bastian was a contributor to DNA mixtures on the inside of the shoes provided to investigators by his girlfriend, the handle of the knife, and the nightshirt worn by Thompson that was collected at her autopsy.

“The DNA is overwhelming,” L’Heureux said to the jurors in closing statements. 

Beginning on Aug. 11, jurors listened as attorneys laid out the story of what happened that day in 1991, and heard witnesses testify on everything from DNA forensic analysis to personal memories from the day the crime was committed. 

The jury deliberated for roughly five hours before reaching a verdict. Judge Andrew G. Liu, who presided over the jury trial, is scheduling Bastian to be sentenced on Sept. 24. He faces a prison sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

This case is one brought forward by the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Task Force, created in 2020 by District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni. Since the creation of the task force, six defendants have been convicted of seven cold-case murders at jury trial, two defendants have pleaded guilty to cold-case murders, four additional defendants are awaiting trial for murder, and one suspect is pending trial for a cold-case sexual assault.

The task force received a $535,000 grant in 2022 from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance to support forensic testing and investigative activities in the prosecution of cold cases where DNA from a suspect has been identified.