2 Men Blamed Slaying Victim for Problems, Taped Confession Shows : Crime: Admission comes in the trial of a man charged in the death of an activist in the Estonian community.

An Estonian refugee and his alleged accomplice had planned to kill themselves because they were hungry and broke after the Estonian community abandoned them, but they decided to kill a North Hollywood woman they blamed for their problems first so she could not laugh at their deaths.

The admission came in a taped confession played Tuesday for a San Fernando Superior Court jury in the murder trial of Peter Sakarias, 24. Sakarias is charged with the July, 1988, slaying of Viivi Piirisild, 52, a popular activist in the Los Angeles Estonian community.

In halting English, Sakarias was heard saying of Piirisild and her husband, Avo: “. . . You know if we kill ourselves then Piirisilds, both of them, they are going to laugh on us for the rest of their lives, and they are going to tell everybody . . . they stupid, you know. . . .”

Police Detective Vic Pietrantoni said in court that he and his partner had interrogated Sakarias for two days after Sakarias and Tauno Waidla were captured by Border Patrol officers a month after the killing as the two crossed back into New York from Canada, where they had fled.

In March, Waidla was sentenced to death in the gas chamber for his part in the slaying and burglary. Sakarias also would face the death sentence if convicted.

The confession was taped on the second day of interrogations in August, 1988, after Sakarias waived his rights to remain silent or to have an attorney present, according to Pietrantoni. Waidla does not appear on the tape.

In the 30-minute interrogation, Sakarias--who occasionally laughed silently as the tape played in court--said that Piirisild told people in Estonian communities throughout the country that he and Waidla were using drugs and had stolen from employers. Piirisild, who had once befriended the two men, also urged people not to help them, he said.

Sakarias and Waidla had been welcomed as heroes by the Los Angeles Estonian community after they defected from the Soviet army and escaped from East Germany in 1987. But their relationship with Piirisild soured, and both men ended up on the street.

He then explained that he and Waidla broke into the Piirisild vacation home in Crestline, Calif., and, after eating some food, took a hatchet and a screwdriver and went to the Piirisild house in North Hollywood.

Sakarias said he and Waidla waited for Piirisild to leave before breaking into the house. He said they initially had not planned to kill her, but that the frustration of their situation sunk in.

“I didn’t have even a cent. . . . I didn’t have any food, I didn’t have any job and that’s why, I mean, like, we didn’t care about my life any more,” Sakarias said on the tape. Even if he died, Sakarias said, at least Piirisild would also be dead.

“She not going to live to enjoy the fact that we are dead and she is not gonna laugh on us,” he said. “That was the most problem because this is what she really desired, you know.”

After Piirisild returned, Sakarias said Waidla immediately struck her on the head with the blunt end of the hatchet. Sakarias then stabbed her with a knife, “I guess five times or more until the handle broke.”

After dragging her body to a back bedroom, Sakarias said, the two went back to the kitchen, “opened the refrigerator and I ate some liverwurst.”

The two men then stole jewelry and credit cards, one of which was used to purchase two airline tickets to New York. They later went to Canada and were captured as they tried to re-enter the United States at Rouses Point, N.Y.