while Koehler was commanding the Balboa Naval Transmitting Station at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal Zone, rumor about his engagement to a particularly colorful, San Francisco socialite and divorcée made national news. Koehler, reported to be "the wealthiest officer" in the Navy, was romantically linked to Milo Abercrombie (1895–1977), niece of John W. Abercrombie, U.S. Congressman from Alabama. Milo was the former wife of the convicted World War One German spy and later, prolific Hollywood movie actor Wilhelm von Brincken. Abercrombie, acclaimed by noted portraitist Harrison Fisher as "California's greatest beauty", had married von Brincken in 1915 when he was a German military attaché in San Francisco. She divorced him in 1919 while he was imprisoned at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary on Puget Sound. Von Brincken was sentenced to serve two years in the Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial for plotting to foment an insurrection against British colonial rule in India, this sentence to run concurrently with a similar conviction for his alleged participation in bombing and dynamiting plots against the government of Canada. Following her divorce from von Brincken, Milo changed her and their two children's last names back to her maiden name so they would not be "ashamed". In 1920, Abercrombie married a U.S. naval officer, Lieutenant Lyman K. Swenson, at St Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. Swenson introduced Milo to Koehler in Honolulu when both men's ships were stationed there. In May 1925, Milo obtained an interlocutory decree of divorce from Swenson, to become final in May 1926. In Panama, Koehler read the news stories claiming that he was engaged to marry Milo Abercrombie the following year, in June 1926. Brushing it off, Koehler tersely told the press, "Some error," while Abercrombie did not take it so lightly. "I have been deeply humiliated", she told reporters, her eyes "wet with tears". "This is a most unkind blow of fate. I cannot possibly understand how this false rumor got about." Later, in a bitter child visitation rights battle in 1927 that went all the way to the California Court of Appeals, Abercrombie lost custody of their children, Lyman, Jr. ("Robert") and Cecelia, after making baseless accusations that Swenson had molested their four-year-old daughter. The appellate court excoriated Abercrombie, "[I]n furtherance of a manifest determination to prevent him from ever seeing the children again, under any circumstances, she was instrumental in inspiring and promoting a scheme directly involving one