Murder suspect sickened herself

A Camden County woman charged with murdering her husband's grandmother by poisoning her with antifreeze may have tried to harm herself.

Authorities say Anna Castagna, 43, of Brooklawn, swallowed something as police came to her house and had to be revived.

Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office officials said that they did not know what Castagna ingested but that she was taken to a hospital and stabilized before being jailed.

Castagna was charged Thursday with murdering Mary Groatman, 88, while she was at a rehabilitation center after a fall but was otherwise in good health.

An attempted murder charge was upgraded Thursday after Groatman was taken off life support and died.

Assistant Gloucester County Prosecutor Janis Melfi said Castagna visited Groatman Sunday at a rehabilitation center in Deptford.

"Shortly after the visit, Ms. Groatman was unconscious," Melfi said. "It was determined by hospital staff that she had ingested ethylene glycol, which is the main ingredient of antifreeze. We don't know the manner in which she ingested it, or the motive."

Prosecutors say Castagna went online to research what antifreeze would do to a person.

"We learned from the computer taken from her home that Mrs. Castagna had researched the effects of antifreeze on the human body, and that she bought some shortly after that," Melfi said.

As police came to her home to question her, Castagna swallowed something and suffered an adverse reaction, the assistant prosecutor said.

"She had to be revived at the home," Melfi said. "She was taken to the intensive care unit and then to a crisis unit, where she was declared fit for incarceration before being brought to the jail."

Melfi stopped short of calling the episode a suicide attempt. "I don't know what her intention was," she said.

Castagna is being represented by a public defender. A message left with the public defender's office was not immediately returned.

Authorities await the results of an autopsy.