A man who was been in custody for more than 20 years in the slaying of his girlfriend is innocent, and the woman’s husband and her nephew have been charged in her death, Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said Monday.

Horace Roberts, 60, of Temecula, had his case dismissed Friday through DNA evidence.

He was found factually innocent Monday by Riverside County Superior Court Judge David A. Gunn, a move that will help Roberts seek wrongful conviction restitution from the state of $140 a day for each day he was incarcerated, which could amount to about $1 million.

He has been free for several days, and was with family to the East Coast on Monday, said attorneys for the California Innocence Project, which worked 15 years for his exoneration.

Roberts had been in custody since his arrest in late April 1998. He was convicted of second-degree murder in July 1999, his third trial for the slaying of co-worker Terry Cheek, 32, with whom he was having an affair. He was sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison.

Jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict in his first two trials.

The now-charged husband of Cheek, Googie Rene Harris Sr., went to two of Roberts’ parole hearings to make sure he stayed in prison, California Innocence Project attorneys said. Cheek, was slain, they said, because of jealousy in a love triangle.

Roberts tossed-out conviction was not from police or prosecutor wrongdoing, said California Innocence Project Director Justin Brooks.

“Mr. Harris actually set our client up. It was evidence that was fabricated by, we believe, the actual killer,” Brooks said. “On top of that…he actually had the audacity to come in and testify at our client’s parole hearings, that he be kept in prison longer…it’s certainly something can’t be put on the police department or the district attorney’s office in terms of evidence; it was evidence that was actually fabricated.”

Project attorneys joined Hestrin on Monday to announce Roberts’ exoneration and the new charges filed against Harris, 62., Cheek’s estranged husband at the time of her death, and Joaquin Lateee Leal, 52, Cheek’s nephew. Their alleged roles in the case were not disclosed.

Both men were in custody and scheduled for arraignment on Tuesday, Oct. 16, court records showed.

The project worked with Hestrin’s Conviction Review Committee, which he set up in 2015 to scrutinize cases that are credibly challenged, and joined Hestrin on Monday to announce Roberts’ exoneration.

Hestrin and California Innocence Project attorneys declined to describe the nature of the DNA tests that had brought about the dismissal of Roberts’s case, but Hestrin said the evidence absolving Roberts was “definitive.”

“These same advances in technology that are allowing us to go back and look at old murder cases that have sat dormant, to revitalize and charge those cases, is the same technology that feed Mr. Horace Roberts,” Hestrin said.

“What happened to Mr. Roberts was an absolute tragedy and a travesty,” Hestrin said in the news conference. “Our system of justice is designed to make sure outcomes like this do not happen, and yet it happened in this case.”

In April 1998, Cheek’s body was found near Lee Lake outside Corona. She had been strangled. The mother of two had been in a romantic relationship with Roberts, a co-worker at a San Juan Capistrano medical lab.

The black Nissan pick-up truck she was last seen driving was found a short distance away on the 15 Freeway near Indian Truck Trail. Co-workers say the truck belonged to Roberts.

Brooks said that “from the beginning we saw problems with the theory of the case,” noting the location of the truck.

“To us it made no sense right from the beginning: Why anyone would bring a body to the side of the 15 (Freeway), put the body on the side of the road, and leave their own fully operable truck nearby, linking them to the crime?”

He called it a “classic murder case where you have a husband, a wife, and a lover, and the wife ends up dead. And then there’s two obvious suspects….and in this case, unfortunately, Horace Roberts did what many people have done before when they are having affairs — he tried to cover it up … it started looking like he was trying to cover up a murder.”

Hestrin said evidence against Roberts at the time included the location of the truck; Cheek’s purse, found at Roberts’ house, and Roberts not being truthful with the police about his whereabouts.

“I want to say this directly to Mr. Roberts: I am sorry for what happened to you. All of us at the district attorneys office are deeply impacted by what you have endured,” Hestrin said. “My words are indequate to make up for what you have lost …you have my commitment that we will use this technology and all of our resources” to review past, present and future cases, “where appropriate.”

“He’s incredibly grateful to be out,” Brooks said of Roberts, post-release. “He’s incredibly lucky that his family are still there and waiting for him. He’s got a wife, he’s got kids, he’s got grandkids,” Brooks said. “How he’ll feel in a week, in a month, in a year, when he starts to grasp how much of his life he has lost, it is going to be a difficult road for him.”

Prosecutors said during the trials that Roberts killed Cheek because he thought she was going to end their relationship and return to her husband.

“This is a prosecutor’s worst nightmare,” Brian Sussman, the retired Riverside County Deputy District Attorney who tried all three cases, said Monday. “I am heartbroken for him and heartbroken for (Cheek’s) family that has to go through this again,” Sussman said in a telephone interview.

He said he had offered Roberts a deal after the second trial: He would recommend 11 years in prison if he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. “He turned it down. Rightfully so — he was innocent,” Sussman said.

“If he would have taken that 11 years, no one would have looked into his innocence. He led us to the right people. Not only did this guy suffer, but he led us to the right people,” Sussman said.

“I thought we were doing the right thing,” Sussman said of the circumstantial-evidence case he presented. “I am sorry from the bottom of my heart. It should have never happened. It’s been a nightmare for him, and I hope he can make something out of the rest of his life. I really do.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of Joaquin Lateee Leal, one the new defendants in the case.