Woman slain in Century City had feared for her life

She talked about it with a neighbor. She sent text messages to a business associate. Her brother, Scott Goudie, said it was a frequent topic of their weekly conversations.

"She said, 'If you don't hear from me, something is wrong," said Goudie, who lives in Salt Lake City.

On July 28, her fear became reality. Moments after leaving a meeting with her estranged husband and divorce attorneys, Pamela Fayed, 44, was slashed and stabbed to death in the parking garage of a Century City office building.

A short time later her husband, James Fayed, 45, was arrested on fraud charges stemming from the couple's international gold trading business. He remains in custody.

Federal prosecutors successfully argued against bail, calling Fayed the "primary suspect" in his wife's death. On Friday, Los Angeles police detectives investigating her slaying conducted a search of Fayed's Moorpark ranch house.

But after three weeks in custody, James Fayed has not been charged in his wife's slaying.

"Prosecutors have been beating war drums on this murder charge but have brought nothing but unsubstantiated allegations and no charges," said Mark Werksman, Fayed's criminal defense attorney. "They have not shown us since that Mr. Fayed is involved at all in Mrs. Fayed's death."

In the weeks since the slaying, a fuller picture of the couple has emerged from a tangle of divorce documents, public records and interviews with relatives and friends. What it reveals is an eight-year union that dissolved into a bitter fight over custody of a young daughter and control of the couple's international gold trading company.

"She was happy at first," Goudie said. "She seemed to be doing OK with everything until this last year or so."

Pamela was the youngest daughter of a Marine father who raised four children in Salt Lake City, Goudie said. James was born in Washington, D.C., and spent much of his youth in Maryland, public records show.

They met in California, where Pamela, then known as Pam Goudie, had moved as a young woman. She had bigger dreams than Salt Lake City could offer, her brother said.

"Pam was always ambitious," Goudie said. "She was certainly willing to take a risk."