Sons distraught over mom's disappearance

MELLEN, Wis. — Relatives of a Bergland woman who has been missing for more than a week are urging anyone with information about her disappearance to contact authorities.

Jody Lynn Newberry, 54, has been missing since the Ashland County Sheriff’s Department received a call at 4:30 p.m. on May 29 from her sister.

Newberry had traveled from Bergland to Mellen on the evening of Thursday, May 24, to attend the Mellen Jam music festival in a wooded area on private property.

Mellen Jam is held on Memorial Day weekend on forested private property on Gilgen Road, just north of Mellen.

Newberry traveled to the festival with a Bessemer man and the two became separated, authorities said.

Her sons, Ryan and Jake Newberry, are pleading for anyone with information to come forward. “We just miss her terribly, and we want her home,” Jake Newberry, of Colby, told WAOW.com.

“Me, personally, I’m at a standstill,” said Ryan Newberry, of Medford.

They said they were unsure whether she had even made it to the festival.

A press release from Ashland Sheriff Mick Brennan said she was last seen around noon Saturday at the festival site. Her companion apparently told deputies she was last seen near a river. The Bad River flows through that area.

On social media posts, the companion said he had been camping with Newberry overnight and they were walking out from the remote campsite when she suddenly became lost while trailing him from behind.

Newberry is white, 5-3, and 115 pounds with long brown hair, several missing teeth, a skin tag on her nose, usually wearing wire-rimmed glasses.

Anyone with information may call the Ashland County Sheriff’s Department at 715-682-7023, option 1.

An initial search by Ashland County deputies was followed by an expanded search by the Sawyer County Search and Rescue K-9 unit and continued efforts after that.

A reporter’s call to the sheriff’s department for information on the case Tuesday was referred by a dispatcher to a deputy, but wasn’t returned.

—Ralph Ansami