Police have laid murder charges more than 26 years after two men went missing in Barrie.

During a news conference on Wednesday morning, Barrie police and the OPP announced the arrest of 49-year- old Michael Guido Gerald Claes of Elmvale.

He has been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Grant Ayerst and Norman Whalley and remains in custody.

The two men, aged 21 and 36 respectively, were last seen leaving a hotel in Toronto on Sept. 11, 1991, but are believed to have gone missing in Barrie.

Their remains have not been found.

Police did not specify exactly what evidence led to Claes’ arrest, who grew up in Barrie and was known to them for several years.

But Det.-Insp. Gilles Depratto, the major case manager on the file, said that police wouldn't have been able to make an arrest without information gleaned from the public in the wake of a social media campaign launched last year.

"We can't say specifically if one tip helped us come to the successful resolution, but we can say there was a lot of discussion in the public and there was a lot of people who provided us information," he said.

Police publicized the cold case last May in a social media campaign called Simcoe County Case Files.

Police also offered a fifty thousand dollar reward back in June, and hope this is the first of many cracked cases in Simcoe County.

“Maybe this is an opportunity that will trigger them to come forward with information, and that it will lead to the arrest of those individuals,” says Barrie Police Chief Kimberley Greenwood.

Today Ayerst’s family released a statement which said in part

“Early on in this tragedy we chose not to let the events surrounding Grant's disappearance destroy our lives and family. Instead we chose to keep the good memories alive, hope to move us forward and always anticipated the day we would have some resolution to this tragedy which disrupted our lives over 26 years ago.”

Whalley's family in B.C. did not offer comment, but police say they finally have answers they've been hoping for all these years

The disappearances of Ayerst and Whalley were among four cold cases profiled as part of the Simcoe County Case Files, prompting renewed interest and offering hope to the families of the alleged victims

The other cases part of the project included 17-year-old Cindy Halliday of Waverly, who was last seen hitchhiking near Midhurst in 1992. Her remains were discovered months later, and questions still swirl around what happened to her.

April Dobson, 40, was sitting on a friend's porch in 2005 when she was shot to death, and the body of 30-year-old Jaimee Lee Miller was found in a wooded area in March 2016, five months after she was last seen.

All of the cases included in the project are believed to be homicides.

With files from The Canadian Press