A MURDER squad detective praised a mother who penned a heartbreaking poem which helped track down her teenage son's killers.

Heroin addict Wayne Bircham, 19, was chased through a town's rundown streets and stabbed through the heart in daylight.

But police came upon a wall of silence until his mother Michelle, 36, poured out her heartache in the poem which two detectives pinned with a bouquet to a fence at the spot where he died in Grangetown, Teesside. The poem which was dedicated to "Our Darling Son" read:

We lay these flowers in the place you last lay

They took your life and for that I know they will pay

A mother's love will never die

The pain and grief may fade one day but will never go away

God has you in his care now, son, of that I am sure

You will stay there in peace, my son, until the day he'll say we'll be together

And then my pain will go away."

Detective Inspector Gordon Lang, of Cleveland CID, said yesterday after two men admitted the killing at Teesside Crown Court: "Many people either saw or knew of the attack but were too frightened to come forward.

"There is no doubt that Mrs Bircham's poem touched many heartstrings and it led people to contact us with much useful information. She is a very brave woman".

Wayne staggered more than 100 yards after he was knifed on a Sunday afternoon in June near his home in Lanchester Road, Grangetown.

Inspector Lang said: "Wayne was known to the police as a drugs user but no one deserves to die in the way that he did.

"He was a young man who, with help, had his whole life to look forward to."

A boy of 17 from nearby South Bank, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to the June 10 murder.

Derek Angus, 29, of Caernarvon Close, Enton, Middlesbrough, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and also to wounding Wayne with intent in another stabbing four days earlier.

A third accused, Darren Hart, 20, of Upper Oxford Street, South Bank, pleaded guilty to affray. Hart was granted bail, and they will be sentenced next month.