A woman on trial in one of Germany's worst infanticide cases, involving eight dead babies, confessed today to killing several of them but said she could not remember how many.

Andrea Goeppner, 45, was charged with four of the murders after the babies' remains were found wrapped in towels and plastic bags last year in a case that revulsed the country. Asked how many of the eight she confessed to killing, her defence lawyer Till Wagler said, "it could have been two, three or four".

Prosecutors were unable to pursue murder charges for the other four infants, as one was found to have been stillborn and three were so badly decomposed that it was unclear whether they were viable at birth.

The grisly remains were uncovered last year in Goeppner's apartment in the Bavarian small town of Wallenfels. The woman's estranged husband, Johann Goeppner, 55, is charged with complicity for failing to stop the killings, which took place between 2003 and 2013.

In her confession, read out by her lawyer, the mother said she had given birth to each of the eight babies at home alone and had wrapped every infant in a hand towel. She would promptly suffocate any baby that moved or cried, then place the body in a plastic bag or containers and hide it in the apartment, said Wagler.

The pair had each brought two children into the marriage, and the couple conceived three more surviving children together, the court heard. Even though they did not want any more children, they used no contraceptives, and Andrea Goeppner was almost constantly pregnant over a decade.