Harry Horowitz

Harry "Gyp the Blood" Horowitz
Police mugshot of Horowitz in 1912
Born	c. 1889 New York City, New York
Died	April 13, 1914 Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York, U.S.
Cause of death	Execution by electric chair
Resting place	Mount Zion Cemetery, Queens
Nationality	American
Other names	Gyp the Blood; Levy; Jones
Criminal charge	Murder
Spouse(s)	Lillian Horowitz
Conviction(s)	Burglary, robbery, murder

Harry Horowitz (c. 1889 – April 13, 1914), also known as "Gyp the Blood", was an American underworld figure and a leader of the Lenox Avenue Gang in New York City.

Harry Horowitz was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan c. 1889, to Orthodox Jewish parents. He was a slight figure, standing just under 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) and weighing 140 pounds (64 kg). but extraordinarily strong. He bragged that to win a $2 bet, he broke a man's back in three places. He served prison terms for burglary and robbery.

New York City Judge Franklin C. Hoyt later recalled:

Three or four years ago, when I was sitting in special sessions, my associates and I had occasion to sentence a young man who had been found guilty of petty larceny. In pronouncing sentence I said: 'I am convinced from the evidence that has been brought out here that you are lacking in moral sense, that at the end of your prison term you will go out and commit more. It is a wrong to the community that you should be so set at liberty, and it is a wrong to you that you should be allowed to follow your course without restraint.'

One of the parents of my young man—he was barely twenty-one—told me tearfully that he was a good boy, the best of boys, but that he had been in bad company and tempted too far. Before he had served out his term his parent came to me again to tell me that now he had promised to reform and how well he was doing. I still had my doubts. —The Outlook, February 8, 1913.

On July 16, 1912, he and three accomplices murdered gambler Herman Rosenthal outside the Hotel Metropole. The four shot Rosenthal to death. Two of the killers, Jacob Seidenshner (aka "Whitey Lewis"), and Francisco "Frank" Cirofici (aka "Dago Frank") were arrested immediately after the killing, along with Charles Becker, a detective from the New York Police Department who was suspected of being a business partner of Rosenthal, but Horowitz and the fourth gunman, "Lefty" Louis Rosenberg, were not. There was a massive hunt for the missing two, who were found and arrested on September 14, 1912, in an apartment in Glendale, Queens, where they had been hiding for months.