SALINAS – The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office announced that charges were brought against an elderly Fresno man for murders that occurred in the 1990s.
Ira Bastian, 85, was arrested without incident July 15, and charged with the cold-case murders of George Smith, 67, and his mother-in-law Eva Thompson, 79.
Back in 1991, Smith and his wife owned and lived at Smith’s Restaurant, which was located on Ellis Camino Real in Prunedale.
On Nov. 11, 1991, Anna Smith returned home from running errands and discovered her husband George had been stabbed to death, and her mother, who was unable to walk, was dead in her hospital bed.
Bastian, who was 52 at the time, was a former employee of Smith’s Restaurant. He was considered a suspect in the original investigation, but no arrests were made at the time.
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Bastian is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with special circumstance allegations that he murdered the victims during a burglary and that he committed multiple murders.
According to the District Attorney’s Office, it is also alleged that Bastian personally used a knife during the killings.
If one or more of the special circumstances is found true by a jury, Bastian could face the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The District Attorney’s Office’s Cold Case Task Force was created in 2020, and since its inception four people have been convicted of cold-case murders in a jury trial, with four others awaiting trials.