THE mother of Rhys Jones’s teenage killer wept yesterday as she admitted trying to help her son escape justice.

Janette Mercer, 49, a former £50-a-time prostitute in a city centre vice den, gave a false statement to police about a bike owned by Sean.

Dressed in a black trouser suit, the mother of three, from Good Shepherd Close, Croxteth, was warned she faces a long prison sentence.

Sitting in the glass-fronted dock at Liverpool Crown Court, she was flanked by security guards and spoke in a barely audible voice as she dabbed tears from her eyes.

Having previously denied attempting to pervert the course of justice, and with the court expecting the start of a four-day trial, Mercer changed her plea to guilty at the last minute.

Rhys’s parents Melanie and Stephen sat across the courtroom as she spoke only to confirm her name and enter the plea.

When Sean Mercer, then just 16, was first arrested on suspicion of murder on Saturday, August 25, 2007 – three days after Rhys was killed – he, through his solicitor, gave police a prepared statement.

With his mother sitting by his side in the interview room he said: “I own a mountain bike, it is black, cream and orange. The police have taken possession of it.

“I do not ride any others and have no access to mountain bikes.”

On September 7, 2007, Ms Mercer also gave police a statement which backed up the account she had already heard given on behalf of her son – missing out a crucial piece of information.

When Mercer shot 11-year-old Rhys in the car park of Croxteth Park’s Fir Tree pub on Wednesday August 22, 2007, he was standing astride a silver Specialised Hardrock mountain bike.