A clouted Rosemont man who came to local attention when he was photographed sleeping on the job as a tollway supervisor was shot and killed Wednesday in a domestic incident, officials said.
Joseph Caffarello, 31, was shot at noon on Scott Street just south of Granville Avenue, authorities said — the second homicide in less than a week in the normally quiet northwest suburb of just 4,000 residents.
An off-duty Rosemont police officer allegedly shot and killed Caffarello, so Rosemont turned the investigation over to the Illinois State Police, according to a news release from Rosemont police. The police officer, who has been on the job for four years, has been put on leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
State police spokeswoman Monique Bond confirmed ISP was investigating but declined to provide details.
Rosemont village spokesman Gary Mack said the shooting was a “domestic incident” that occurred in the street.
Caffarello was two years ago photographed on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, sleeping on the job while he worked as an Illinois Tollway garage supervisor.
He’d twice previously been fired, only to win his job back, before underlings in 2013 finally secured his dismissal by photographing him asleep in his office.
And he wasn’t shy about bragging that he had clout that protected him, authorities said at the time. He was also accused of intimidating tollway employees and threatening to bring down the tollway’s inspector general.
Caffarello “did threaten to get anyone who was opposing him, including me,” Tollway Inspector General James Wagner said in 2013. “There were reports from the employees that he referred to his clout being able to take care of him.”
Caffarello’s attorney disputed the allegations, but Cafarello did have ties to people with mob or political connections, public records show.
Though Caffarello wasn’t accused himself of being in the Mob, he once wrote that his uncle — the late mob street tax collector Anthony “Jeep” Daddino — had been like a father to him. Daddino has been described by the Chicago Crime Commission as an Outfit member who was friends with the first mayor of Rosemont, Donald Stephens, and was a village employee. Daddino also worked for the late, feared mob killer Frank “The German” Schweihs, court records show.
When Stephens died in 2007, Daddino was at the funeral and told the Sun-Times he “lost a very good friend.”
The following year, after Daddino died from cancer, Caffarello asked the tollway for bereavement leave — something normally reserved for the deaths of immediate relatives.
“I consider my uncle immediate family due to the fact that he raised me from a baby,” Caffarello wrote in a letter to tollway officials. “I do not have a relationship with my father, and my uncle was the closes [sic] thing to a father.”
When he wasn’t working at the tollway, Caffarello found work at D & P Construction, which has been tied to the family of reputed Chicago Outfit boss John DiFronzo.
Caffarello also was married to the daughter of the clerk of the village of Rosemont. In 2013, Caffarello became a father.
He said he was “screwed” by the tollway after he was fired the third time.
Beyond that, he didn’t want to discuss his dismissal with the Sun-Times in 2013, telling a reporter he was about to enjoy a dinner of orecchiette with sausage and broccoli rabe cooked by his mom, whom he described as “the best.”
Relatives could not be reached Wednesday.
Mack could not provide further details of the shooting.
Cafarello’s murder is the second this year in the Northwest suburb, which until Friday had not seen a murder in more than a decade.
On Friday, a 14-year-old Des Plaines student was killed in what police said was a gang-related murder.
Mack said the cases are not related.
Contributing: Rosalind Rossi, LeeAnn Shelton
