Crime & Safety
86-Year-Old Convicted Of Restaurant Killings From 1991
A jury convicted an 86-year-old former restaurant employee of murdering two people in 1991 at a diner in Prunedale.
MONTEREY COUNTY, CA — A jury convicted an 86-year-old former restaurant employee of murdering two people more than three decades ago at a family-run diner in Prunedale, Monterey County prosecutors said.
In a statement Tuesday, the Monterey County District Attorney's Office said jurors found Ira Bastian guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the 1991 killings of George Smith, 67, and his mother-in-law, Eva Thompson, 79. They also upheld special-circumstance allegations that Bastian committed multiple murders and killed during a burglary, and that he used a knife in the crimes.
Anna Smith, who co-owned Smith's restaurant with her husband, discovered the bodies of her spouse and mother after returning from errands on Nov. 11, 1991. George had been stabbed 11 times with a kitchen knife, while Thompson, who was physically disabled, was beaten, strangled and had her throat slit while lying in her hospital-style bed. The knife was later recovered in a laundry hamper.
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Bastian, then 52, had previously worked at the restaurant but denied being there around the time of the killings. Investigators linked shoe impressions found at the scene to a pair of shoes provided by his then-girlfriend, the District Attorney's Office said.
The case remained unsolved for decades until new DNA testing in 2024 and 2025 linked Bastian to mixtures found inside the shoes, on the knife handle and on Thompson's nightshirt.
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Bastian is due to be sentenced on Sept. 24 and faces life in prison without parole.
The relaunched investigation into the murder was an initiative by the Monterey County's Cold Case Task Force, created in 2020 and funded federally to investigate and prosecute unresolved homicides. Since its creation, six defendants have been convicted of seven cold-case murders at trial, with two others pleading guilty, the District Attorney's Office said.
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