Confession in Slaying Challenged : North Hollywood: The trial opens today in the death of Estonian activist Viivi Piirisild. The defendant is a refugee who stayed at her house.

A month after Estonian activist Viivi Piirisild, 52, was beaten and stabbed to death in her North Hollywood house Estonian refugee Tauno Waidla--who had lived with Piirisild and her husband--admitted responsibility for her death, according to court records.

But it is uncertain whether Waidla’s statements to police will be introduced as evidence at his trial for the killing of Piirisild, a pillar of Southern California’s tight-knit Estonian community, whose death in July, 1988, was met with shock and outrage.

Waidla’s trial is scheduled to start today.

Waidla’s court-appointed attorney, Martin Gladstein, has filed a motion contending that his client’s confession is inadmissible. He said Waidla, who had been arrested on charges of illegally crossing the U.S.-Canadian border, had requested an attorney before talking to two Los Angeles police detectives about the murder.

Waidla and Peter Sakarias--who were hailed as heroes in 1986 after they daringly deserted the Soviet army and escaped to West Germany--face the death penalty if they are convicted, as charged, of murdering Piirisild while burglarizing her house.

Sakarias has been judged mentally incompetent to stand trial for the time being and has been sent to Atascadero State Hospital, court records show. Although he understood the nature of the proceedings against him, psychiatrists found he was unable to cooperate with his lawyer in his own defense.

According to Gladstein’s memorandum, court records and transcripts of the preliminary hearing, Waidla asked to speak to an attorney while being questioned on Aug. 28, 1988, about illegally crossing the U.S.-Canadian border.

After Waidla made his request, the agent ended the interview about Waidla’s legal status. But when Los Angeles police detectives later arrived to question him about the murder, he discussed it with them, providing details about the killing, according to court records.

Gladstein, in his motion to suppress the confession, contends that Waidla’s original request for the attorney renders his later confession about the slaying inadmissible.

San Fernando Superior Court Judge Howard Schwab has not ruled yet on the issue.

If the confession is barred from the trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Ipsen will be left to prove the case with circumstantial evidence, including fingerprints found in the Piirisild house and a pawnshop receipt that shows Sakarias pawned a pair of Piirisild’s earrings shortly after her death.

Although she had lived in the United States since she was a teen-ager, Piirisild never gave up her identity as an Estonian, or her fervent dedication to the cause of a free Estonia, independent from Soviet rule, friends said.

She and her family fled Estonia in 1944--when she was 9 years old--as the Soviet military was approaching to take over the country, which had been under German military occupation from 1941 to 44. Her parents found a place for the family on a German military ship sailing across the Baltic Sea. When the vessel was torpedoed by a Soviet ship, Piirisild’s brother drowned but she and her parents swam to shore.

The family was placed in a German refugee camp, where her father died and where she and her mother spent about five years before they were allowed to emigrate to the United States, friends said.

She got married in this country, and she and her husband, Avo, formed the National Baltic American Freedom League. She was active in the Republican Party and she helped develop Estonian programming for the Voice of America. She was also dedicated to helping Estonian refugees who sought to create new lives for themselves.

That is why Piirisild opened her home to Waidla.

Waidla and Sakarias had been forcibly drafted into the Soviet army and had been stationed in Leipzig, East Germany. In 1986, when both were 19, they escaped to West Germany, saying they had traveled 125 miles in three days, mostly on foot and at night. At the double-fenced border, they climbed the first barrier, then hid in a ditch while Soviet soldiers, alerted by an alarm, made an unsuccessful search for them with spotlights.

After they were granted asylum by the United States, they came to Los Angeles in late 1987 to provide information for researchers at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, who were studying the Soviet military, Piirisild’s friends said.

Sakarias moved to Atlanta and Waidla stayed in Los Angeles, living with Piirisild and her husband for a year, doing odd jobs around the house in exchange for room and board.

Friends said Piirisild “was like a mother” to Waidla, “helping out and offering to put him through college.” But they said he was a “lazy, lazy boy,” and spent most of his time around the house.

Later, according to court records, Sakarias returned to Los Angeles and Waidla moved out of Piirisild’s house so he could live with his old friend. But they quickly found themselves in financial difficulties, which may have prompted them to try to burglarize the Piirisild house, authorities said.