Monterey DA announces charges in 1991 cold case killings

Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni announced charges Tuesday for the 1991 cold case killings of an elderly woman and her son-in-law in Prunedale.

The charges allege that Ira Ulysses Bastian, 85, killed Eva Thompson, 79, and George Smith, 67, who owned and resided at Smith's Restaurant on El Camino Real in Prunedale with his wife Anna Smith, Thompson's daughter.

According to the District Attorney's Office, Anna Smith returned home on Nov. 11, 1991, to find her husband and mother brutally stabbed to death. Thompson, who was unable to walk, was found slain in her hospital-style bed, the office added.

Bastian, who was 52 at the time, was a former employee of Smith's Restaurant and was considered a suspect in the initial investigation, though no arrests were made, Deputy District Attorney Matthew L'Heureux said.

Authorities arrested Bastian without incident Monday after a round of DNA testing produced enough evidence to warrant his arrest and the charges against him, prosecutors said.

Bastian is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with special circumstance allegations that he killed the two victims during a burglary and committed multiple murders with a knife. If a jury finds one or more of the special circumstance allegations true, Bastian could face the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors said.

His arraignment was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, L'Heureux said.

The charges come after the establishment of a task force in 2020 dedicated to solving unsolved homicide cases in collaboration with all of Monterey County law enforcement agencies, L'Heureux added. He said 600 homicide cases in the county have gone unsolved over the past 50 years.

Bastian's charges also follow technological development that eases the process of discerning genetic information from items with DNA traces from multiple people, L'Heureux added. In January 2022, the task force received a $535,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to fund forensic testing and investigations in cold cases where DNA from a suspect has been identified.

Since the task force's establishment, four defendants have been convicted of cold case murders at jury trial, and three more await trial for murder, prosecutors said.

None of the convicted individuals were given the death penalty, L'Heureux added.

The office asked that those with information about Bastian or the two murders contact District Attorney Investigator Oliver Minnig at (831) 755-5070.