As George Smith sat at a desk in his California restaurant where he lived with his wife and mother-in-law more than three decades ago, someone approached him from behind.
The assailant slit Smith’s throat , notes and records from his granddaughter, JoAnn Holland, show, the Monterey County Herald reported in 2018.
The 67-year-old’s bedridden mother-in-law, Eva Thompson , 79, was also stabbed to death, the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office said in a July 16 news release.
When Anna Smith returned home to Smith’s Restaurant after running some errands on Nov. 11, 1991, she stumbled upon the gruesome scene, prosecutors said.
Her mother was still grasping a telephone as she lay lifeless in her hospital bed, the Monterey County Herald reported.
The slayings would torment the family for decades to come, the newspaper reported.
“To everyone else, my grandmother and Smitty are merely referred to as a ‘cold case,’” Holland wrote in a plea to the sheriff’s office in 2003 to reopen the case, the newspaper reported. “As for my mother and me and each of our family members and friends, my grandmother and Smitty are with us every day and have never left our side. We feel they truly deserve justice.”
Now, decades after their slayings, there is a moment of justice.
DNA evidence helped lead to the arrest of Ira Ulyesses Bastian, of Fresno, in relation to the 1991 Prunedale slayings, prosecutors said.
“It’s always really difficult to stomach this type of violence,” Deputy District Attorney Matthew L’Heureux told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s also extremely rewarding, with the assistance of others, to focus on who wronged somebody and to do something about it.”
Bastian, a former restaurant employee, was a suspect from the outset, prosecutors said.
However, prosecutors said “no arrests were made at the time.”
Over the decades, Monterey County sheriff investigators continued to look for leads in the case using “newer and more sophisticated DNA testing,” the district attorney’s office said.
Then, in 2024, a DNA testing resulted in enough evidence to support Bastian’s arrest, prosecutor said.
“It wasn’t until the recent investigation that everyone involved felt confident enough to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” L’Heureux told the Los Angeles Times.
He was arrested July 15 and was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, the district attorney’s office said. The charges come “with special circumstance allegations” that the killings were done during a burglary.
Bastian could face the “death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole,” prosecutors said.
Prunedale is about a 135-mile drive west from Fresno.
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