Is learning to write a person’s name in Kanji a sign of respect?

I was playing a japanese visual novel yesterday and there was a mad scientist that experimented on girls and murdered, including his own granddaughter. The protagonist that tries to save them found CDs with the girls names and noted, that every girls name was written in Katakana, except for his granddaughters and got mad, that the murderer didn't even bother writing their names in Kanji.

It sounded like it was kinda disrespectful to write names in Katakana (not Hiragana although the victims were all japanese). Is that really a thing that using Kanji for names shows that you care more?