“Angelo the Brush” Abbrescia

Angelo Abbrescia was active in the narcotics rackets and closely affiliated with key members of Harlem’s notorious Lucchese Family of Cosa Nostra, including "Big John" Ormento and "Tom Mix" Santoro. At one point, authorities even believed he was tied to Lucky Luciano.

Arcangelo (Angelo the Brush) Abbrescia - aka The Brush, Angelo Bozzi, Angelo Abruscia, and Angelo Brescia - was born on March 11, 1900, in the port city of Bari. The city is the capital of Southeastern Italy’s Apulia Region which runs along the Adriatic Sea. Angelo was one of two sons born to Giuseppe and Rosa (nee Pelella) Abbrescia. His brother’s name was Pietro.

He immigrated to the United States by the time he was in his early twenties. We know this because, by the late 1920s, he started what would become a significant criminal record with the New York City Police Department.

Angelo Abbrescia

On December 5, 1950, he was officially naturalized as a citizen of the United States at the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, for the Eastern District of New York.

Although he primarily conducted his business around Manhattan, for many years, Angelo, his wife Mary, and their daughter Rose lived in a rental apartment at 23-56 31st Street in the Astoria section of western Queens County.

FBI #201962, NYCPD #B-73752, Alien-Reg. #3605115

Standing a mere 5 feet 3 inches tall, Angelo was small in stature. A U.S. Treasury Department mugshot taken in 1953 shows Abbrescia as grey and balding, with grey eyes, and a ruddy complexion. The police intake file described him as being chunky, weighing 163 pounds. It also noted that he walked with a pronounced limp and had to use a cane to get around.

His criminal record dates to 1929 and includes arrests for first-degree felonious assault, violating federal liquor laws, federal alcohol tax evasion, and a conviction for federal narcotics law violations.

New York's Little Italy

Abbrescia was a habitue of several notorious mobbed-up social clubs and hangouts along Canal and Mott Streets in the Little Italy section of Lower Manhattan. He also frequented the area around 117th Street and 3rd Avenue in Upper Manhattan’s Italian East Harlem section, that borough’s “other” Little Italy.

Law enforcement authorities say that he was well acquainted and associated with a variety of New York’s hoodlum fraternity, but that he was most closely affiliated with key members of Harlem’s notorious Gaetano Lucchese Family, especially hoodlums connected to that borgata’s narcotics rackets.

He was reportedly on intimate terms with such dedicated heroin traffickers as Samuel (Sammy Kass) Kassop, Charles (Charlie Mouse) Curcio, Vincent (Jimmy DeGeorge) DiGiorgio, Nicholas (Big Nose Nick) Tolentino , Charles Santora, and Ugo (Hugo) Mariani, who eventually be deported from the United States.

But among his most important drug connections were two of the Lucchese Family’s most important capos: the infamous John (Big John) Ormento and his partner in crime, Salvatore (Tom Mix) Santoro. Both hoodlums ranked among the most rapacious and unrepentant heroin merchants in the nation.

John (Big John) Ormento

Salvatore (Tom Mix) Santoro

Abbrescia himself was once described by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (FBNDD) in their internal department memos as a "mafioso and major narcotic trafficker for many years who supplied narcotics to dealers both locally and in interstate commerce. He had his own smuggling source of supply in Italy and also dealt with other Mafia traffickers.”

Federal agents also noted that Abbrescia "has never been known to engage in any legitimate business or to be gainfully employed.”

A Mafia-Style Tuneup

In 1929, he was arrested and booked for a vicious assault he committed. The particulars of this incident were not available nor was the identity of his victim. But the assault was serious enough that our boy Angelo was charged with first-degree felony assault.

What is interesting is that at the time of his booking, Abbrescia gave a fictitious name, identifying himself to New York City policemen as Angelo Bozzi.

Later that same year, he was either convicted at trial or copped a plea to a reduced charge of second-degree assault for which the judge sentenced him to serve a 2–1/2 to 5-year prison term at upstate New York’s notorious Sing Sing State Penitentiary.

Bootlegging

On Monday, January 4, 1938, he became one of fifteen suspects taken into custody for their participation in a highly organized bootlegging syndicate. Those arrested were charged with operating four separate alcohol stills in various locations, each with a capacity to produce over 1,000 gallons of hard liquor each day.

Collectively, the gang was accused of having made and distributed 500,000 gallons of high-grade liquor yearly. According to investigators, the ring operated six other large stills that had a similar yearly output and capacity though they weren't named in the indictment.

U.S. Treasury Department investigators and IRS agents who headed up the investigation said that over three years the bootleggers had been operating, they had defrauded the government out of more than $10,000,000 in liquor taxes.

U.S. Attorney Harold O’Dougherty said the bootleg ring was the last of the big-time gangs to be run down and he praised the agents of the Alcohol Tax Unit who spent over two years tracking the gang’s activities.

At the center of the ring’s operations was a 10-car garage owned by four brothers at 32-61 110th Street in the Corona “Little Italy” section of Queens.

Authorities said that at the time of the indictment, two of the brothers, Samuel and Frank Pagano, had been arrested on federal charges in another criminal matter and were free on $2,500 and $2,000 bail, respectively.

From the Pagano family’s garage, the quartet operated one alcohol still but supplied three other stills with the materials required to manufacture liquor. The brothers also allegedly operated a second still from a private home they rented at 18-11 131st Street in nearby College Point.

Besides these two stills seized within New York City, federal agents also raided two other stills the bootleggers were running up in Orange County, NY.

The fifteen suspects named in the indictment included fourteen men and one woman. All were charged with conspiracy to manufacture, transport, and sell untaxed alcohol.

Besides Abbrescia and the two Pagano brothers, those named in the indictment included the other two Pagano brothers, Thomas and Joseph, as well as Salvatore Mezzasalma, John Latrofa, James Amaturo, Antonio Mazza, Smeralda Peduzzi, Antonio Roscigno, Ernest Simonetti, Gustav Lemke, Grace Gismundi, and Harry Johnson.

Salvatore Mezzasalma

Side note: Born in Sicily but residing in Brooklyn, suspect Salvatore Mezzasalma, whose true name was Rosario Mezzasalma, was later described by the FBI as a respected mafioso and racketeer who was known to be active in bootlegging, counterfeiting, and trafficking in “kilo only” quantities of heroin.

A Huge Drug Haul

On August 23, 1952, headlines splashed across the front pages of newspapers throughout the country with titles like “Agents Smash $1,000,000 Dope Ring,” “U.S. Agents Smash Big N.Y. Dope Ring,” “3 Arrests End Dope Ring, Says U.S. Aide,” and “Smash Huge Dope Ring, Seek Luciano Link.”

Federal narcotics agents released a news bulletin two days earlier on August, 21 stating they had taken three men into custody in lightning-quick raids after having trailed the suspects for three months. Federal authorities said they even made several drug purchases from them.

U.S. prosecutors identified fifty-two-year-old Angelo Abbrescia as the overall kingpin of this particular narcotics network. They said working directly under him was a 37-year-old Newark, New Jersey resident they identified as Ugo (Hugo) Mariani. The third suspect was twenty-five-year-old Charles Santora, who resided in Manhattan’s East Harlem neighborhood.

At their arraignment, the three men were charged with narcotics conspiracy and various counts of selling and concealing narcotics.

The judge set a total bail package for the drug suspects at $155,000 with an extra high bail of $60,000 apiece for Abbrescia and Santora. Mariani’s bond was inexplicably set lower at $35,000. But it didn’t matter anyway, because back in 1952 those amounts were considered a staggering sum of money. So, each man was forced to remain in jail pending trial.

U.S. Attorney Maurice A. Bungard told newspapers that the ring was the largest in the area "since the days of Waxey Gordon." Bungard added that the ring "may also lead us to Lucky Luciano."

He said the ring allegedly smuggled narcotics into the United States from Turkey, Egypt, and Southern Italy.

Note: Bungard went on to describe Gordon, whose real name was Irving Wexler, as a major Prohibition-era racketeer and beer baron. On August 2, 1951, Gordon was arrested on narcotics charges and sent to prison. At the time of Abbrescia’s arrest, Gordon had only recently died, still languishing behind bars, and Lucky Luciano was living overseas in Italy after being deported from the U.S.

Law enforcement authorities identified Mariani as the drug ring’s chemist. He was caught red-handed when agents raided the apartment where the ring maintained their drug stash and where they cut and packaged their product.

Agents explained that as they entered the apartment, they found Mariani sitting at a kitchen table fully equipped with weigh scales, sifters, cutting agents such as milk sugar and quinine used to dilute the heroin, and glassine envelopes and other packaging supplies used to prepare the drugs for resale to other dealers on the wholesale market and retail sales to street addicts.

They also confiscated over 50 ounces of pure white heroin estimated to have a value of over $22,000.

Suspect Charlie Santora was accused of having served as the drug ring’s delivery man.

James C. Ryan, the Narcotics Bureau District Superior in charge of the investigation, stated, “Abbrescia admitted spending 65 days in Italy last summer, where we know he had a direct contact.” Authorities believe that "direct contact" was Lucky Luciano.

At the time of their arrests, Ryan said he asked Abbrescia if he had tied up with Luciano, to which Abbrescia responded, “Luciano? Who knows Luciano?”

Ryan said the ring "had so much money that it sometimes extended up to $50,000 in credit to some of the drug wholesalers who bought from them.”

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

In July 1964, Angelo became the victim of an armed robbery at his Astoria apartment one evening. The suspect was a twenty-seven-year-old man named Oliviero Vellone whom police said knew Abbrescia.

Abbresca told police he was alone in his three-room apartment at 10:30 P.M. His wife was away visiting relatives. When he answered a knock at the door, four men wearing white silk stockings over their heads pushed their way inside. Two carried guns and the other two brandished knives, he told police.

The quartet tied Abbrescia to a chair in the kitchen and then ransacked the apartment taking $300 in cash they found in the bedroom and in several coffee cups in the pantry. They also took $975 worth of jewelry. After they fled, with no harm done to Abbrescia, the old man freed himself and called the police.

Vellone, a Corona, Queens clothes tailor, was charged by police for being the "finger-man" in the robbery. He and his accomplice, twenty-two-year-old Jamie Matos were both arraigned in Queens County Criminal Court in Kew Gardens. They were charged with felonious assault and armed robbery. Police said three additional men were also being sought.

At their arraignment, detectives from the Police Department’s Astoria Squad told the judge that Abbrescia "has been a cancer victim since 1946 and has had to walk with the aid of a cane since 1926 when he was struck by a boulder which partially paralyzed him.”

After cops later captured and interrogated the suspects, detectives learned that Vellone had been the getaway driver, waiting in a car outside the apartment house during the robbery.

They also discovered that Vellone and Abbrescia had previously been on friendly terms. It seems that only four months earlier in April, Vellone had been arrested on a charge of leaving the scene of a car accident and was fined $200 by court. Abbrescia had been nice enough to loan the younger man the money to pay the court.

It appears that this is how Vellone decided to repay the aging hoodlum’s generosity.

There was no exact date of his passing. But one thing’s for certain. During his lifetime in the underworld, “Angelo the Brush” seems to have been a very colorful character.

Until next time…”The Other Guy”

“Angelo the Brush” Abbrescia

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You May Also Enjoy

Lucchese Family Captain: Joseph “Joe Calabrese” Lagano

Bronx-based Lucchese Soldier: Daniel “Danny Cap” Capra

Soldier Antonio (Tony Grio) Vadala: Tommy Lucchese’s “Compare”

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