Richer - pronounced Ree-chay" - Lapointe, 39, claims he hired Karla Homolka to work in his Longueuil hardware store to see if he either could rehabilitate her or get "the truth" out of her.

Now, right away a whole forest of red flags pops up in my cynical mind.

Why did he want to rehabilitate Karla Homolka? What are his qualifications? His methods? What's in it for him? And just exactly what does he mean by rehabilitate?

He also claims he wanted to "get the truth" out of her. How? Why? To what ultimate end?

Is all this normal in an employer-employee relationship, especially when the employer is a man, the employee a woman?

In fact, why did he even hire her? He runs a hardware store. Christ! I doubt Karla knows a Robertson from a bloody Philips, let alone that duct tape has more uses than simply for binding your victims.

However, now that he's breached her trust, ratted her out, I guess she can kiss her job goodbye. But does she have any legal recourse? Or for that matter any rights as an employee after just three weeks on the job?

And considering the fact Karla is under strict court-imposed restrictions and is prohibited from associating with criminals, I find it bizarre behavior on Lapointe's part that he suggested organizing a private party for her and her prison friends, which would contravene those restrictions.

Even more bizarre is why he left his two young children in her care when he knew damn well it would cause her to violate court restrictions.

Reportedly, he contacted a Quebec television station, asking for $35,000 to rat out Karla and set her up so they could secretly videotape her. But they turned him down.

In the news game in Canada, chequebook journalism is not only unethical, it also casts a dark pall over a news source's motives, and makes any information that source provides highly suspect.

Rebuffed, Lapointe decided to "cooperate" instead with The Toronto Sun.

What, if anything, he received in return is not known. However, he did provide the tabloid with inside information about her conversations with him, and he set up Homolka so she could be photographed in public without her knowledge, which - because of her notoriety - is not illegal.

However, accepting Lapointe's pure hearsay as fact goes against every tenet of professional journalism. Facts are only so if they are corroborated by at least two or three other sources.

Otherwise, Lapointe's information could be pure bullshit, or at least a highly embellished version of what he and Karla actually talked about.

Ordinarily, a reporter would be obligated to confront the only other person who was party to the conversation - Karla - and get her version of the story. If she refused to talk, well...at least you gave her the opportunity to tell her side of the story. You gave her a fair chance to say yea or nay about Lapointe's version of the facts.

Woodward and Bernstein were continually reminded of that basic rule of journalism by their Washington Post Editor, Ben Bradley. Every good editor lives by it. Every good reporter lives or dies by it.

I can only hope that The Sun reporters tried to get Karla's side of the story. Or that some reporter will.

Personally, today's Karla stories create more questions than answers, especially questions of ethics and motives.

Richer Lapointe needs to be placed under journalism's penetrating microscope of truth.

His credibility and motives need to be minutely examined and made public. And we need to know whether he set her up by encouraging or causing her to allegedly breach her court-imposed restrictions - if she in fact did.

The Toronto Sun, too, needs to explain the methods it used in breaking the story. And whether a chequebook was involved.

Just because Karla Homolka is an ex-con and Canada's most despised female murderer does not mean she's fair game for unfair journalism.

Nomatter how reviled we are by her, her life, or her crimes, good journalism, quality journalism demands she be given a fair chance to respond to Lapointe's version of the truth.

LATE UPDATE: 6:40 p.m. Aug 23/05

"She said, no problem, I will not work for him," said Bordelais.