Ontario Provincial Police are finally able to put a name to a body that was found in 1967 in Balsam Lake Provincial Park near Coboconk, Ont.

The remains are that of a young man named Eric Jones of Noelville, Ont., police announced at a news conference Monday, as they posted a $50,000 reward in the search for Jones' killer.

Family members were able to identify Jones after watching a recent report on CTV's current affairs program, W-FIVE.

The man's eldest brother, Oscar Jones, told CTV Toronto that his family believed Eric Jones left home to start a new life. He said receiving confirmation that the remains belong to his brother have been extremely hard for the Jones family, even though more than four decades have passed since the man was last seen.

"It's very, very hard," he said.

Jones' sister, Pauline Latendresse, said she asks herself what else her family could have done.

"Why weren't we there for him? We were a big family, maybe if we knew what was going through his mind in the days before he was murdered," he said.

Jones, 18, was one of 11 children born to the family. He will be buried next to his parents in northern Ontario.

"We'll bring him home," Oscar Jones said. "We'll do what we have to do but this is not the way we wanted this to end."

OPP Det. Insp. Ian Maule, who heads the cold case squad, expressed his condolences to the Jones family while making Monday's announcement.

"They're dealing with a loss 42 years later as though it just happened today," Maule said.

Jones was last seen in April, 1967, after he moved to Toronto to live with an aunt. Oscar Jones he last saw his brother at their sister's wedding that month.

He moved out a month later and disappeared. His body was found in December, 1967, with his hands tied behind his back with twine, and his clothes stripped off, with the exception of his tennis shoes.

With few clues to go on, police could not identify the man and the case went cold for decades. That changed in 2006, when police used DNA testing and facial reconstruction to begin to trace his identity, along with that of another young man.

The second young man had been found slain in 1968 in Schomberg, about 40 kilometres north of Toronto. He was also found bound and naked. Both men had gone missing from the Yorkville area of Toronto.

Within hours of circulating images of the two reconstructed faces, two people contacted police to say the second man looked a lot like Richard "Dickie" Hovey, 17, of Fredericton, N.B.

After contacting relatives of Hovey, police obtained DNA samples and compared them to DNA recovered from the decades-old skeletal remains. It was a match.

Not long after, Hovey's remains were laid to rest by his three surviving siblings, Marcia, Carolyn and Kevin.

After the W-FIVE report on the continuing investigation aired on Feb. 14, members of Jones' family contacted police, who were able to confirm the identity of the Coboconk remains.

The two cases appear to be related to a third murder of another young man whose skeletal remains were found near Markham in 1980, police say. That victim's identity also remains a mystery.

As W-FIVE reported earlier this year, the cases may also be connected to an attack on another 21-year-old who was dumped in a field north of Barrie, Ont., but who survived.

Anyone with information that may assist in these investigations are encouraged to contact the OPP Criminal Investigation Branch at 1-888-310-1122 or (705) 329-6111 or the York Regional Police at 1-866-876-5423. Anonymous tips may also be made through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).