Sam Wood and his family were highly visible along Noosa’s upscale Hastings Street during a week-long holiday that ended with the former Bachelor star facing two domestic violence charges.
A fellow holidaymaker familiar with the family’s movements before Saturday night’s alleged incident at the La Mer luxury villas said they might have appeared like any other affluent visitors if not for influencer-style videos filmed by Wood’s wife, Snezana, and his 21-year-old stepdaughter, Eve, around the pool and boardwalk.
‘The whole family were happy to be seen,’ the holidaymaker said.
‘They were front and centre of Hastings St all week. Coffees in the plaza. Sam was out with all the kids. They got smoothies at the Oakberry açaí bar.
‘You could see them sunning on the deck of their apartment. Snez and the girls were filming content by the pool and on the boardwalk for several hours on the Friday afternoon.’
‘Sam looked like the picture-perfect family man,’ the holidaymaker added.
‘The stepdaughter [Eve] was in and out of all the boutiques and dressing the part for Noosa in September. And you’d see Sam and Snez on the boardwalk early in the morning with the rest of the Noosa crowd.’
The Daily Mail obtained a photograph of Wood climbing the stairs to his holiday villa with two of his daughters. It is believed to be the last image taken of him before his arrest on Saturday night.
The Daily Mail obtained a photograph of Sam Wood climbing the stairs to his villa with two of his daughters, believed to be the last image taken of him before his arrest on Saturday night
Wood and his family were highly visible along Noosa’s upscale Hastings Street during their week-long holiday, which ended with the former Bachelor star facing two domestic violence charges. Wood is pictured with his wife, Snezana, and stepdaughter Eve
‘You’d see Sam and Snez on the boardwalk early in the morning with the rest of the Noosa crowd,’ a fellow holidaymaker said of Wood, pictured in a TikTok filmed before his arrest
The developments come as passages from Snezana’s 2024 memoir, Untold: A Story of Love, Motherhood, Heartbreak and Change, resurfaced this week following the charges against Wood.
The memoir explores several of the couple’s make-or-break moments, many of them involving differences in their approach to parenting since they met on Channel Ten’s The Bachelor in 2015.
In one chapter, Snezana described becoming pregnant shortly after she and her daughter, Eve, moved from Perth to Melbourne in 2015 to be with Wood. The pregnancy ended in miscarriage.
Wood had already planned a trip to the United States with friends. After learning she was pregnant, Snezana pleaded with him not to go.
‘We ended up having arguments about it. I didn’t want him to go. I was particularly concerned about the timing and my low hormone levels, which had been detected a few weeks prior,’ she wrote.
‘I was starting to feel even more tired and unwell. Sam assured me that everything would be fine and went on his trip to America.
‘Before I went to one of my regular appointments, I had a happy and chatty phone conversation while he was preparing for a big night out with the boys.
‘He was checking in to make sure I was OK, and he was excited to hear from me before my appointment. I told him I’d be fine and would give him a call or text afterwards.’
Passages from Snezana’s 2024 memoir, Untold: A Story of Love, Motherhood, Heartbreak and Change, resurfaced this week following the charges against Wood
The Woods have faced challenges in their relationship, largely based on their parenting styles
Details in Snezana’s 2024 memoir have resurfaced in the wake of Sam’s arrest
Tragically, the routine scan, which Snezana attended alone, revealed her baby had not survived – and she would need to have a procedure the following day to remove her foetus from her body.
‘I walked out of the room and to my car in shock as I tried to call Sam, longing to hear his voice,’ she recalled.
He did not pick up.
‘Completely overwhelmed, I wrote him a text message. The shock and grief gripped me so tightly that the words I typed were harsh, blunt and painfully abrupt,’ she said.
‘”The baby is dead!” I wrote.’
Snezana recalled blowing up at Sam over the phone in the aftermath.
‘I was angry at Sam for not being there when it happened. “Why did you go? I told you not to go!” I found myself yelling, even though I knew him being there wouldn’t have changed the outcome,’ she said.
She admitted her anger ‘only made his pain worse’ after losing his first child.
After their miscarriage, the Woods became parents to three daughters
Fast forward three years, and another milestone moment was marred by Sam and Snez not being on the same page.
The couple tied the knot in Byron Bay in 2018, and planned a ‘recovery’ gathering the following day.
Suspecting she was hungover, Snezana was struggling.
‘My body was not on board with the day’s agenda, leading me to make an early exit, while Sam, ever the gracious host, the thought of leaving with his new wife never even entering his mind, stayed behind with our guests,’ she said.
On their return to Melbourne, the couple found they were once again expecting – resulting in the birth of daughter Charlie, now seven.
During her final, turbulent pregnancy with Harper, now four, the couple again found themselves at odds over a social occasion.
Snezana struggled with her health the day after the couple’s fairytale Byron Bay wedding
Snezana was walked down the aisle by her father, Marko Markoski
‘We had organised a belated housewarming party at our house [in Mount Martha on the Mornington Peninsula], which I was now dreading,’ Snezana wrote.
‘I wanted to cancel the entire thing. I couldn’t think of anything worse. But Sam, ever the optimist, insisted we stay positive and move forward with it.
‘In a way, he was right, but having to pretend to everyone that everything was fine and dandy aside from the all-day sickness was very hard.
‘Our guests were enjoying themselves and I just wanted to go to my room, curl up in a ball and cry from both how sick I felt and the unknown factors surrounding my pregnancy.’
Now, with four daughters – including 21-year-old Eve from Snezana’s previous marriage to Perth motocross champion Jason Rapoff, and nine-year-old Willow – Snezana admitted her parenting style doesn’t always align with Sam’s.
‘We have different approaches to teen discipline,’ she wrote.
‘I’m, “You’re grounded for a week, you can have your phone but you need to hand it over at 9pm,”‘ she explained.
‘Sam’s more: “You’re grounded for three months – that means no phone the entire time and you can use the iPad and laptop for schoolwork until 10pm, but then you hand them in.”
Snezana welcomed baby girl Harper, now four, after a difficult pregnancy
She recalled feeling sick and distressed at the housewarming of their Mount Martha home
The couple share differing approaches to discipline, according to Snezana
‘We’re a work in progress in this area!’
Snezana, who has been diagnosed with ADHD, described Sam as a ‘master in the art of relaxation without a care in the world’, while she was focused on ‘tackling mountains of laundry… or conquering email Everest’.
Untold also revealed Snezana’s previous relationship to Rapoff – who has a history of drug use and became a paraplegic after a motorcycle accident when their daughter Eve was just a baby – was more difficult still.
Without referring to her first husband by name, she said the arrival of Eve forced her to leave him, despite it being seen as ‘disgraceful’ in her Macedonian culture for a woman to abandon a marriage.
She alleged Rapoff ‘refused to drive me to the hospital’ when she was about to give birth.
‘So I held my breath, braced myself, grabbed the keys and hobbled into the driver’s seat,’ she said.
A doctor recommended she stay in hospital, despite not experiencing active labour, in a bid to delay the birth for Eve’s safety.
She said Rapoff only visited her twice, ‘for a few minutes, before leaving me again’.
Snezana left her first husband, Jason Rapoff, after the birth of their daughter, Eve
‘I was too depressed to leave my bed. The nurses were worried I was so isolated,’ she said.
While giving birth, ‘my then-husband came and went. I’m not even sure what he was doing, all I know is that he wasn’t there with me’.
The Daily Mail contacted Rapoff for comment on Tuesday, but he would only confirm that he had spoken to Eve in the wake of Sam’s arrest and that she was ‘fine’.
Snezana remained steadfastly single in the years after splitting from Rapoff, until her sister Lidija and a young Eve encouraged her to apply for The Bachelor – where she would ultimately fall in love with Sam.
Sam was arrested on Saturday after police attended a property on Noosa’s main street.
He did not appear in Maroochydore Magistrates Court on Monday due to ‘mental health concerns’, with the matter instead dealt with by his lawyer, Mathew Cuskelly.
Mr Cuskelly asked for the case to be relisted for Thursday, when Wood is expected to apply for bail.
The celebrity fitness trainer will remain in the local watchhouse until then.
Sam was arrested on Saturday night after an alleged altercation at the La Mer holiday villas in Noosa
Police attended the La Mer villas on Hastings Street at about 9pm on Saturday after receiving reports of alleged domestic violence.
‘Police have charged a 46-year-old Victorian man with domestic violence offences early this morning, 4 October,’ the spokesperson said.
‘The man has been charged with assault occasioning bodily harm (domestic violence) and strangulation in a domestic setting.’
The Daily Mail does not suggest Wood is guilty of the offences he is charged with.
As exclusively reported by the Mail on Monday, Noosa neighbours had witnessed the frantic moments emergency services descended on the Woods’ holiday unit.
Guests at nearby apartments, who did not want to be named, first became aware something was wrong when police and paramedics arrived at the complex on Saturday night.
One guest said she had not heard any disturbance beforehand but saw a woman let paramedics into the Woods’ $3,000-a-night apartment.
A woman was later taken away by paramedics.
The guest also witnessed Wood being questioned by police at around 9pm before he was arrested and taken to the watchhouse.
Another two witnesses told the Mail they saw police and an ambulance outside La Mer ‘after dinner in the late evening’.
A male guest said he had seen the Woods at the apartment during their stay but did not witness any altercations or arguments.
Another female guest said Wood’s youngest child had sleepwalked and left the room during the family’s stay.
She said the family packed up and left their apartment later that night after Wood was taken away by police.
It’s believed that the Wood family has returned to Victoria since Sam’s arrest.
Snezana is believed to be bunkering down at one of the family’s Melbourne homes, with the two youngest children reportedly sighted at a rental property in Brighton.
They are said to have attended school as usual on Tuesday, having been escorted by two women.
On Tuesday, neighbours noted that a CCTV camera had been installed overnight at the multimillion-dollar home the family are believed to be renting while another property they own in the suburb undergoes renovations.
Family associates were allegedly seen performing ‘decoy drives’ around the block to avoid being tailed by the media.
A Brighton neighbour, who asked not to be named, said the family were ‘absolutely private’ but also ‘nice people’.
She said she was ‘shocked’ to see her neighbours featured on the 6pm news.
‘She was a nice woman, they were nice people. Anything you want, anything you need, [they’d help],’ the neighbour told the Daily Mail.
The neighbour also described Wood as a ‘very nice man’.
‘One time, he asked me, “What are you looking at?” because my gate was closed, it was cold and I couldn’t get in, so he helped me. He jumped over the gate and let me in. A very nice man. He said, “Any time you need anything, just ask.” And then I see him on the news. I was shocked.’
The neighbour said she hadn’t seen Snezana in several days.
GET THE FULL STORY ON SAM WOOD’S ARREST WITH DAILYMAIL+
Sam Wood’s neighbours at $3,000-a-night Noosa holiday villa reveal what they witnessed before DV charges were laid – as details emerge of the multi-millionaire’s ‘mental health concerns’ in lockup
Eve Wood reconnects with estranged biological father after stepdad Sam was hit with DV charges – as her grandmother shuts down sick rumours circulating online
Questions over Eve Wood’s cryptic TikTok shared hours after stepdad Sam was charged with domestic violence offences – as witnesses reveal dramatic scenes at family’s luxury Noosa retreat
If you need someone to talk to about domestic violence, call 1800RESPECT or visit White Ribbon Australia’s website. In an emergency, call 000.
