Allen Wayne Roberts turned on the television and cranked up the volume.
He wanted it loud -- loud enough to block out the screams from the next room, where his girlfriend, Elizabeth Sanders, was beating her young son.
But he didn't call police or Child Protection Services.
Roberts, a carpenter, sold marijuana at that time and worried about the scrutiny a call like that might bring.
So Dylan Sanders died on June 26, 1999.
Detective Rick Lang of the Indiana State Police investigated Dylan's death. It was one of eight child abuse or neglect homicides he helped investigate in Morgan County during the past five years.
Lang said many of those cases had a common theme: People knew about the abuse or neglect but didn't report it.
A visit from a Child Protection Services case manager might have helped Elizabeth Sanders learn to cope with her energetic 18-month-old son, but the mother and child were unknown to the agency.
"It's sad, you know. He didn't have to die," Roberts, 31, said in an interview with The Star.
"My whole concern was getting in trouble for the pot."
If he had the chance to do it over, Roberts said, he would call police and tell them: "Hey, there's something ain't right. This girl's disciplining this kid in a way different way than most people discipline their kids."
The beating Roberts tried to block out ruptured Dylan's small intestine, leading to the peritonitis that killed him two days later.
Sanders, then 19, was charged with murder, but was convicted on a lesser charge of neglect of a dependent.
Now serving a 20-year sentence at the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis, she declined to be interviewed.
Roberts and Sanders started dating in early 1999, and he soon moved into her apartment in the Morgan County community of Brooklyn.
Roberts hit it off with Dylan from the start. "He was my little buddy. . . . I bought him blocks and stuff. He would build things, and then he would look at me like, 'Do you think this is cool?' "
It wasn't long after Roberts moved in that he started having concerns with how Sanders disciplined Dylan.
But when he suggested she go easier on the boy, she told Roberts it was none of his business.
"Sometimes, you know, she tried to love on him, but you could tell he didn't want it -- just, you know, 'You love me now, but you hit me later.' "
Roberts said Sanders rarely struck Dylan in front of him. She disciplined him in the bedroom.
But he did walk in on Sanders as she delivered the fatal beating.
"She was whaling on him pretty good," he said.
Demonstrating a series of violent downward punching motions, Roberts recalled: "The kid was screaming at the top of his lungs. I was, like, leave the kid alone. You know, just leave him alone.
"And she turned around with one of them looks like it's none of your f---ing business. You know, what are you supposed to do?"
Roberts returned to the living room, turned on the television and lit up a joint.
"I had the remote control, you know . . . so I turned up the TV a little, OK."
Dylan suffered through the final 48 hours of his life -- seldom moving from a chair in the apartment.
But Roberts said he didn't connect Dylan's listlessness to the beating.
Sanders told him Dylan had fallen from his crib and that she and her mother would take him to the doctor if he wasn't better by the next day.
But when Roberts returned from a roofing job two days after the beating, Dylan had not improved.
"I was like, Dylan, buddy, you want to take a little nap with me, and he was all happy, you know, and we laid down and took us a little nap," Roberts said.
"He was like at ease when we were laying there . . . because he knew that I wasn't, you know, that as long as I had him or as long as he was around me that he wasn't going to get abused."
After Dylan awoke, he tried to walk to his toy box but collapsed after a few steps.
"I grabbed him up and I'm like, this baby's going to the hospital, and she was like, hold on, let me fix me a soda," Roberts said. "She wanted to fix a soda right there!"
In court, Indiana University pathologist John Pless said Dylan endured the most severe case of abdominal abuse he had seen in a child.
Roberts was convicted of assisting a criminal for lying to investigators about how Dylan was injured. He initially went along with Sanders when she told investigators Dylan was hurt during a fall from his crib.
As the reality of Dylan's death sank in, Roberts told authorities what he had seen and agreed to testify against Sanders.
He was sentenced to three years. The judge suspended the prison time and placed Roberts on probation, citing his eventual cooperation and the remorse he showed.
Roberts was arrested in September on a probation violation.
Talking about Dylan's death from the Morgan County Jail, Roberts -- who has since been released -- said he is haunted by the knowledge he could and should have done more to help the child.
He hopes others concerned about the welfare of children learn from his mistake.
"I've had dreams of that kid waking me up and asking me, you know, 'Why didn't you help me more?' " Roberts said.
"When I got with my girlfriend that I'm with now . . . I told her right from the get-go, I go, 'Hey, I want to tell you the saddest story in the world . . .' " His voice trailed off, and his eyes watered, then he continued:
"Make it your business. If they say it ain't your business, make it your business."
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