Well the story had everything didn't it? With the gory details, London fog, the letters to the press, the catchy name, rumours of royal involvement and so on and so forth... and then it just stopped and he was never caught. Or not for that at least. He surely wasn't the first person to kill a load of people but he was one of the first to do it so violently and mysteriously and so on in a time when the news could be easily broadcast and so on. Five people (or whatever it was) is an average afternoon in a fair number of cities these days but at the time it was a big thing... although I get the impression that the original fuss kinda died down after it stopped and then later on it became a big thing again for some reason.