Ex-employee found guilty in 1991 cold case murders at Prunedale restaurant
By Ricardo Tovar
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SALINAS, Calif. (KSBW) — The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday that a man arrested in 2024 in connection with the 1991 murders of a Prunedale restaurant owner and his mother-in-law has been found guilty.
Ira Ulysses Bastian, 86, was a resident of Fresno at the time of his arrest and was charged with the murders of George Smith, 67, and Smith’s 79-year-old mother-in-law, Eva Thompson.
The jury trial started on August 11, 2025.
George Smith owned Smith’s Restaurant, located on El Camino Real at the time. Bastian was a former employee at Smith’s, said Pacioni.
On November 11, 1991, Anna Smith returned home from running errands and found her husband and mother had been “brutally stabbed to death” 11 times with a kitchen knife. Her mother, who was unable to walk, was found dead in her hospital-style bed.
Smith’s bedroom was ransacked, and cash was stolen from it. The knife was found in a laundry hamper in the restaurant hallway.
Bastian was considered a suspect in the initial investigation, but no arrests were ever made. Bastian said he had not been at the restaurant for more than a year.
A pair of shoes that was provided to investigators by his then-girlfriend was found to have left shoe impressions in the backyard of the restaurant, where the killer had made entry.
He was found guilty on all charges for two counts of first-degree murder, with special-circumstance allegations that he murdered while committing a burglary and that he committed multiple murders.
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